


Self-Mutualism

by movingshock



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: M/M, Other, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2019-11-12 18:29:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18016103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/movingshock/pseuds/movingshock
Summary: Eddie Brock was never good at taking care of himself. Now that he has a parasitic body-mate, he's living for two, and his other half is one naggy son-of-a-bitch who absolutely refuses to live in squalor.He just never would have thought that this naggy son-of-a-bitch would be so stubborn. Or caring.





	1. Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone,
> 
> Three things before we start this adventure:
> 
> 1) I'm currently looking for a beta reader. If you like this first chapter and are engaged with the story, drop me a PM and let me know if you'd like to beta the rest of this work. I've got four of eight planned chapters written so far, so it would be a good chunk of reading to do. If not, I'll just finish the story and then beta it myself.
> 
> 2) Venom has interchangeable pronouns in this story (I know). Humans call Venom a 'he', and Venom refers to itself as 'Venom' or 'it' and very rarely 'I'. We'll get more into that later.
> 
> 3) This movie was fucking awesome. It got me back into fanfiction after a long dry spell, so I hope you like what I write and if not drop me some criticism so that I can improve. You're great and your feedback is great too.

1: Teeth  
\--

Eddie Brock would not label himself as a healthy person. Quite the opposite, actually. The closest he’d ever gotten to maintaining mindfulness and the self were the meditation tapes he’d gotten from Ms. Chang. He rode a bike with a helmet that was expired and faded thrift-store jeans. He drank to excess. He kept in fairly good shape, mostly because his job involved running around strange sites and burning up any excess body fat from adrenaline rushes that centered around his imminent arrest, death, or harm. His showering and shaving habits were sporadic, and the last time he’d voluntarily visited a doctor or a dentist outside of the whole ‘you’ve got an alien parasite’ episode, he wasn’t old enough to drink.

That all changed when he met Venom. Well, met might be a strong word, but ‘was brutally taken over by’ or ‘was moved into’ just didn’t sound as good when trying to comprehend or explain what exactly had happened.

Eddie had never taken good care of himself. If he was brutally honest, he would attribute his low self-worth and destructive tendencies to his mother’s death and his father’s abuse of him thereafter. But, Eddie was also not one to reflect too deeply on these things for fear of losing any positive momentum he’d gained in his life at that point. The few times he’d dwelt on it too long had resulted in what a psychologist would call a ‘deliberate suicide attempt’ and what he would call ‘who gives a shit’. The problems of his past and upbringing had resulted in, by his math, three motorcycle accidents, one six-week recovery stint in the ICU, one DUI, and five breakups. It turned out girls didn’t really like it when they find out you have bigger daddy issues than they do.

The Eddie Brock report had given him something to focus on. Actually, journalism itself had been a beacon of hope. He’d been a star student in high school, and he’d graduated ECU (yes, Emerald City U) with a degree in journalism. New York had been a good period for him until it had all blown up in his face. Eddie had thought his life was over, and in a way, it had been. Eventually, though, he was able to build a home here with Anne and returning to San Francisco hadn’t hurt nearly as much as he’d thought it would.

He thought he’d found something real and stable with Anne, something that he could hold onto for a long time. Of course, once he’d started to think that, his entire world had ended and now she was with a doctor who was, unfortunately, a really, really good guy. Once he thought about it, his real problems with life had really only started to surface when he began to date for long periods of time. It turns out that you can build a framework of success and accolades, and excel at whatever career path you want, but if your mom and dad didn’t hug you enough when you were a kid, you were doomed to loneliness and the resulting pain that gushed from wounds that you hadn’t known you had until you found yourself rocking back in forth in an alley, a frantic ex-girlfriend on the phone as you cried into it about how you hated yourself and everything around you. Ironically, this was you being more emotionally open with her at that moment than you’d ever been throughout your entire relationship.

So, Eddie Brock was a wreck. He knew he was a wreck, and, as far as he would be concerned, he would always be a wreck. Sometimes, things would be good. He would remember to brush his hair, find time to exercise, get to bed on time, and wear his helmet on his motorcycle. But, most of the time, he was more focused on paying his electric and water bills than eating the right amount of vegetables. This didn’t even factor into work, either. Eddie was nothing less than obsessive when it came to his reports, so when he was working, it was usually all he ended up doing.

That changed after he bonded with Venom. For a long time, Eddie didn’t know how this had changed. The symbiote’s presence should have lowered his self-esteem, if anything, with all of its constant nagging and bitching about the things Eddie did or didn’t do. He’d had girlfriends in the past do the same thing, and their behaviour had eventually triggered a classic ‘Brockdown’ as one of his less-sympathetic exes had termed it.

With Venom it was different. Eddie didn’t know why and he wondered, late at night when Venom was deep in one of his rare solo sleep cycles, if it was because he cared more about the invasive symbiote than he did himself. Though, he thought he’d cared more about all of his partners and friends than he had himself and those relationships had disintegrated seemingly due to deep, unsolvable faults in his personality. This thought always pissed him off, though, so he ended up rolling over on his side and falling asleep.

When he was not as alone as he could be at this point in his--their--life, he chalked it up to Venom being a selfish nag. The behavior started small, at first. The first incident of the series started on the second day of the Golden Sun Auto Loan insurance fraud report investigation.

**Brush your teeth.**

Eddie, who was already five minutes late for an interview and had a strawberry Pop-Tart hanging out of his mouth, stopped with his keys in his hand.

“What?” He said through the Pop-Tart.

**Your teeth.**

Eddie rolled his eyes and bit the Pop-Tart in half as he jogged down the stairs to the street. It had been two months since the shitstorm with Drake, and the most important thing he’d come to learn about his new body-mate was that Venom was fucking weird. The symbiote knew nothing about earth culture or human methods, and was appearing to be a very slow learner despite having full access to Eddie’s brain. Once outside, he swung a leg over his bike, cringing as the damp leather seat soaked his crotch when he sat down.

**It’s essential to our good health, Eddie.**

“You can just heal my teeth, right? I spit out all my fillings when we got hit by that truck a few days ago.” Eddie said, slipping his helmet over his head. The inside of the helmet was damp as well and there was a crack in the visor on the right side where the truck had struck them. Somehow, the bike had come through with only a few scratches, which had been a great stroke of luck for them both.

Yes. Venom growled. He said nothing more, so Eddie got no more clarification as to why he had brought it up.

“So drop it, okay? I’m an adult, I don’t need you nagging me about my teeth.” Eddie muttered, trying not to bring up long painful memories of teeth being drilled and pulled.

**Then do it and there will be no nagging.**

Eddie just grunted, started his bike, and rode off down the street. Their bond turned grey for a bit, and he guiltily sent some pink reassurance through it. Venom responded extremely well to colors, more so than words.

Venom was quiet during Eddie’s interview, which pleased him and made him feel a little more guilty about being a dick about the teeth thing. After running all over town and chasing down leads (who would have known that such a small company would have so many convoluted informants?), he grabbed several orders of cheap Thai food from that place Venom liked and headed up the street towards home.

“Anything else?” Eddie asked, still feeling a little bad for the symbiote, who immediately picked up on his weakness.

**Fresh meat.**

“No.” Eddie muttered. The hunger pangs had been getting worse, lately, and he knew they’d have to go eat soon.

**Ice cream?**

Eddie hid a smile.

“Chocolate?” He asked the cool winter air.

**Always.**

Eddie felt a little better as he picked up some chocolate ice cream that claimed to be free-trade and non-GMO. It was seven dollars, but Venom hadn’t been the asshole today, so he bought the nice stuff, not the fucked up dollar ice sludge that he would usually shove down his own throat if he were eating alone.

When they got home, Eddie opened up his laptop and put on a movie while he and Venom ate. He’d found that the symbiote really liked movies and TV, and hadn’t the faintest idea how to work a computer. Eddie didn’t own a television, and he kept dodging the question about whether or not they could buy one. He didn’t have the heart to tell Venom that he could barely afford an internet connection, let alone a television set. Eddie liked action movies and thrillers. Venom didn’t have preferences yet, but Eddie had a sneaking suspicion that the symbiote was taking a liking to romantic comedies, so he tried to limit those.

He devoured the ice cream, and Venom sent waves of blue and pink happiness to him across their connection.

When they finished eating, Eddie shut the movie off and settled down to collect the day’s leads into a written report. He’d actually bought a small pegboard at Venom’s insistence because when he worked his ‘brain got all cluttered’ and then he ‘started leaking stress.’ Whatever that meant. He did like the pegboard, though. He was able to make physical connections between leads, and glance up and see where he currently was on a case. And, not that he would tell Venom this, but he was secretly proud that the symbiote was interested enough in his work to help him do it more effectively.

The Golden Sun case was weird. He’d interviewed nine people today, and each person seemed to point fingers at everyone else, which was normal, especially in a fraud case. What didn’t make sense, though, was that the insurance fraud in question didn’t seem to be real. In fact, Golden Sun appeared to be a shell corporation.

Who would pay to make a fake corporation that would, in less than a year of its creation, draw needless attention to itself by faking insurance fraud? It didn’t make any sense. Eddie rubbed his eyes. It was getting pretty late and his eyes were starting to slide shut against his will.

**Sleep. Unless you’d rather go out...still hungry.**

Eddie snorted and then yawned. Venom oozed out of his sleeves and over his hands, forming inky black gloves, warming him with temptation.

**We could cause trouble, Eddie...find some good food.**

“No.” Eddie murmured. “I have to finish this compilation so I know what to do tomorrow.” He was fading fast, though. And he had a pretty good start tonight. The could go investigate downtown tomorrow and do some tax record searches, so there wouldn’t be any serious running around. He could also feel Venom’s hunger pressing at his insides, thick and suffocating.

He sighed, and then closed his eyes. Maybe they could nose around the Golden Sun office tonight, if Venom was in the mood.

“Alright.” He said. “Don’t eat anyone that doesn’t deserve it.” His voice sounded faint over a rushing in his ears, and everything went black around him. There was something comforting about giving control up to Venom. He felt cared for, though the sweet comfort was mixed with the sting of guilt, because what was safe for him was extremely dangerous for everyone else.

Venom was laughing gleefully, and he could feel the wind pick up as they ran towards the bay. Eddie floated in nothingness, vaguely aware of what Venom was doing to their collective body, but everything was muted, as if he were in a dream. Tonight he had genuinely been too tired to fight back and gain control over Venom’s persistent hunger. A sudden bright spark of fear raced through him. What if Venom decided he liked being in control? What if he didn’t give Eddie his body back?

**“Relax. We are only going for a swim. We’ll be home before midnight. And we will...swing by...that Golden Sun office suite.”**

Venom spoke aloud. Eddie could feel it from how everything around him shook. Venom sent him a series of images, mostly of the fog-lit bay. The moon struggled to pierce through the fog, and the floodlight from surrounding active piers lit the area in ghostly stage lighting. Eddie realized that they were perched on a grain elevator by the pier, probably looking extremely menacing.

_What are we doing up here? You’re up really high._

“Hunting. No humans tonight.” Eddie cringed. “Stop being a coward and sleep. I will take care of us.” A set of monstrous teeth glistened in the fog-dimmed moonlight, and Venom jumped from his perch, slicing through the icy bay water in a way that would have made an Olympic diver sick with envy.

Eddie considered rebelling and stealing control back, but decided that he didn’t want to see the horrors that Venom was going after out in the dark water. Their nightmares were already bad enough. He fell into a dreamless sleep, feeling the ice water of the Pacific race past his fingertips. Something large swam across their vision, and Venom dove after it, bristling with excitement.

When Eddie woke, he was back home, in his bed. His clothes were gone, and he couldn’t taste anything except for...mint. Toothpaste? Had...Venom brushed his teeth?

 **Get into the habit...or else there will be nightly adventures that end in dental hygiene.** Venom purred. He sounded happy. Eddie felt full, too, so he assumed that they’d eaten something big.

**It was a--**

Eddie bolted up, hands over his ears even though he knew that this was a useless hushing tactic.

“Don’t tell me!” He croaked. Venom laughed, but spared him.

**You will remember eventually.**

“Not comforting.” Eddie said. His mouth was starting to ache and he was tasting the iron tang of blood over the mint. “You suck at brushing teeth.”

 **Then do it yourself.** Venom said with no malice in his voice.

“Why do you care if I brush my teeth?” Eddie asked. “It’s probably just easier for you to heal me.”

Venom paused for a long time, then slowly replied,

 **It is...a little thing. That helps us be better.** He paused again, unsure. **Something that...I...should not do for you. We should do it for us.**

Eddie snorted and laid back down. He was cold from their swim in the bay. He rolled over onto his side and pulled a ratty blanket up off the floor where it had fallen when he’d kicked it off the bed in the morning. Anger pricked at the back of his mind, but he knew he was being unreasonable. It was a simple request, after all. Even children could do it.

“Well, I never realized that symbiotes were so interested in their host’s oral health.” He said, trying to make a joke that immediately fell flat.

**Promise to try.**

Venom never asked Eddie for promises. It was usually the other way around.

“Why?” Eddie asked the ceiling. The night was unusually quiet for his neighborhood. Somewhere, in the distance, a car alarm was going off, but it was too far away to really be irritating.

 **I told you why.** Venom said. **Promise.**

For a second, Eddie felt extremely vulnerable, and his mind lashed out at Venom unconsciously with a message of ‘stop poking this subject, it’s sore and I don’t like it.’ Venom persisted, though, and refused to yield. Eddie’s mind fell back into itself, whispering that this was a plot to torture him and shame him, that Venom was just poking at sore spots because he was stupid and bored. That Venom had to know that he had been the kid whose teeth were fucked up and falling apart from neglect, that Venom was laughing at the young man who spent hours in dental surgery after his grandmother had discovered why he couldn’t chew on his right side, and that there was no way that he could keep a promise so daunting. When he failed, Venom would scoff and disparage him, decide he was a bad host, too much work, and desert him.

**Yes or no?**

Eddie was jerked from his train of thought by the harsh vibration of Venom’s voice on his skull.

“I...yeah, I...I promise.” He finally mumbled, shame burning his cheeks.

Warmth and comfort flooded him, and for just a second, Eddie fought back tears. His agreement had made Venom...happy. Not excited or eager, but genuinely happy. He bathed in it, using the happiness of the symbiote to wash away the bad memories that the conversation had brought up.

**Good.**

Eddie rolled onto his side to stare out a window that looked onto the neighboring apartments. This was...new. Totally new. Venom was washing him with positive feelings and energy, and with an emotion that he couldn’t quite place. His mouth still hurt. He was still cold. He was still broke and depressed.

Yet…

Eddie Brock drifted off to sleep while trying to figure out his tangled mess of a psyche. Venom continued to radiate positive emotion like a heater, ruminating all the while.

Venom had looked through a good majority of Eddie’s memories, but without context, they didn’t mean anything. Venom understood Eddie’s relationship with Anne, since it had met her and been with her briefly. This allowed it to understand Eddie’s romantic relationships with others through extended context, though some of those relationships were nothing like the one he’d had with Anne, so Venom understood those less. These relationships were similar to symbiosis, it had concluded, though oftentimes in Eddie’s case the symbiosis went horribly wrong and fell out of balance quickly, burden falling to one party or the other, not both. Also, Eddie had lied about many things to all of his partners, including Anne. He hid his feelings, how their actions had hurt him, and took on more blame for the mistakes he made than he deserved.

Venom had a few months to think about this problem, since Eddie was so involved with “work” and “paying bills”. What caused Eddie to lie to someone? Venom had told many lies through its life, but it couldn’t imagine lying to Eddie. Not after all the time that they’d been bonded. There were things it couldn’t tell Eddie, perhaps, but not outright lie about.

Venom had gotten through Eddie’s twenties, and understood that a lot of memories had been deliberately written over or repressed to the point where Venom couldn’t reach them, especially those in Eddie’s childhood. Venom had a feeling that it knew where the root cause of Eddie’s self-destruction lay, but it did not posses the knowledge to fix the causes yet.

Well, fix may not be the right word. Heal, repair, mend. Venom felt lucky to have the brain of a journalist to help him with English and human languages. Eddie was a very bright human. Not that Venom panned to share that with Eddie.

Besides, Venom did not want to change Eddie Brock. Eddie was perfect. There were no flaws that it could find within Eddie as a human, but his behaviour and need to hurt himself was unacceptable. Venom would focus on helping with little things that it knew would improve their life together. Things that it couldn’t even believe were points of shame for Eddie.

No more harm would come to Eddie Brock so long as he was host to Venom. There were creatures in the universe much stronger and meaner than Venom, but the symbiote knew that most of them did not dwell on Earth. And, most of Eddie’s problems stemmed from a lifetime of emotional isolation, not from an imminent threat of super-beings. Unsurprisingly, Venom understood exactly what that felt like. It knew the symptoms, they were just much softer in this light, hot world. Klyntar and the comet had been so much colder, more vicious. There, a host could rip you apart for even entertaining thoughts of your own and vice versa. Klyntar were trained from their spawning age to submit to a host’s will, for that was how they would survive, but Venom had never been good at submitting to anyone.

Eddie Brock, from Venom’s point of view, had stupid problems. Fixable problems. But, he was warm and soft and had a glowing kind heart that did not burn Venom at all. Venom did not know the English word for it yet in its own language, probably because it didn’t exist, but it would do anything for Eddie Brock.

Not that Venom would tell Eddie that.


	2. Bathing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Still don't have a beta reader. If you want to beta for the rest of this, give me a shout. Enjoy the chapter, and remember the following:
> 
> 1) Thank you for reading this.
> 
> 2) You're great and your feedback is great too--positive or negative.

* * *

**2: Bathing**

* * *

 

Eddie stumbled through the door of his apartment, soaking wet and oozing blood from a pretty deep cut on his leg. Golden Sun had officially turned into a shitshow. The Globe had better cut him a giant goddamn paycheck, because he was flat broke, just ate three people, killed seven, incapacitated ten, and was bleeding out pretty badly right now.

**Patience, we’re healing it.**

Eddie felt heat rush to his leg, and the burning sting of an open wound disappeared. He tore his motorcycle helmet off his head, slammed the door to his apartment so loudly that the walls shook, and dropped the helmet on the floor. What was supposed to be a low-key case about insurance fraud had turned out to be much worse. Eddie had spent the last two months scratching his head and chasing his tail about why a small car loan company took so much care to maximize complexity in its business dealings. The answer was something that had simultaneously made his skin crawl and his journalistic mind ecstatic. Golden Sun Auto Loan, LLC had been linked directly to oversea shipments for a really nasty human trafficking act that was running from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Eddie had dug up this information a week ago, and, after realizing that no one—not the cops, not Lewis, not the city—was going to act in a timely manner, had taken it upon himself and Venom to solve the problem. He and Venom had synced up and brought the entire West Coast operation down, brick-by-brick, all the while freeing many (too many) underage girls.

“Thanks.” Eddie mumbled. He didn’t feel any better, even with the physical injury gone. There had been a lot of kids there, and he’d gotten a lot of documentation of the atrocities on his phone before losing it when he found a six-year-old girl in chains. He and Venom had found the immediate responsible parties and torn out their throats, and he’d actually relished eating them. Venom had been the one holding them back, this time, which they both found disturbing. Eddie wandered blankly around the apartment for a while, occasionally stripping off an article of clothing when he noticed he was soaked to the bone. He wasn’t sure if he was trembling from the cold or from shock. Probably both.

Eddie kept trying to remember what his plan had been when he got home, but all he saw were those little girls, hidden in shipping container after shipping container. His breath came in short gasps, even though they’d stopped physically exerting themselves a few hours ago. Venom was trying to talk to him, trying to probe their connection for information, but Eddie shut him out. They’d gone immediately from the scene of the crime to the Globe office and delivered Lewis his notes as well as evidence that would give law enforcement more than enough information to shut down the rest of the ring...if there was anyone left alive stateside.

Still, he felt like _shit._ He should feel good, right? After all, he’d just busted a human trafficking ring. Blown it wide open. Dozens of children would be out of their hellhole sex-slave lives and into a slightly-better hellhole of child protective services or foster care.

  **Eddie, something is wrong with us.** Venom sounded a little worried, because it had healed everything that was physically wrong with Eddie, including a fractured scapula, which it had been particularly proud of.

 Eddie sank down onto the ratty grey couch that he and Venom spent so much time on, and put his face in his hands.

  **Eddie.** Venom pulled out of his body and formed a small head on his shoulder. It peered at him. **Come back. Our connection is getting dark.**

 "I’m sorry, I...” Eddie shook his head, still buried in his hands. “All those kids.”

  **We helped them?** The uncertainty was too much, and it broke him.

 “I...I don’t know.” He breathed, feeling tears well up behind his closed eyes. He shoved them back. How dare he cry about something that he didn’t – couldn’t—understand. “I don’t know.”

  **We destroyed the bad guys in charge. They were delicious.**

 Venom was silent for a moment, and then wrapped itself around Eddie in a spiderweb embrace.

  **You are troubled.**

 Eddie sat there for a very long time, not moving. His job had always been rough. Dead bodies and bloody crime scenes weren’t new to him. He’d seen some serious shit as a field reporter, but today had been fucking raw. Those kids had all been so young and had the eyes of people twenty years older than him. Some of them had clearly been drugged. Most of them were sick or had infected wounds somewhere. Some of them--

 “ **Eddie.”** Venom spoke aloud now, his voice reverberating in his ears and in his head. **“Stop.** ”

 Eddie just shook his head again. They’d been chasing the Golden Sun line for a month. Every day, every resource had been devoted to the story, to finding the truth. Well, they’d found the truth, and it had been worse than Eddie could have predicted. Their notes and evidence had been dropped off in a bloody folio on Lewis’s desk, on the way home, Eddie bleeding too much to care who tried to stop him. Now, the report was over, and…

  **They will be okay. We cannot help them more than we already have.**

 Eddie took a slow, shaking breath, and felt the distance between him and Venom shrink a little. He was finally starting to feel the heat from the symbiote’s embrace. The high-pitched ringing in his ears from blood loss and being in supreme emotional duress was fading, just a little. He could finally feel something, and tears welled in his eyes again. He did not let them fall, did not grant himself the privilege of weeping over someone else’s suffering.

  **Eddie Brock, your fear is unnecessary.** Venom said, completely sincere and insistent. He sounded as if he were telling Eddie the biggest secret of his life. **We saved many young humans today, thanks to your need to find the truth.**

 Eddie could feel the waves of white emotion rippling off Venom, all concern and tenderness. He tried to shrink away from it, sink back into the black space he fell into on a regular basis, but Venom refused to yield. Finally, Eddie broke down and tried to communicate why the last week had fucked him up so much. They started a long, non-verbal conversation in pictures about children, and adults, and the differences between the two. Venom learned that children were innocents, to be protected by adults, not exploited by them, and that for an adult like Eddie to see children being exploited was jarring and awful and made him want to tear his own skin apart with knives.

 Venom asked about the exploitation, and in his mind, it was for labor, but Eddie was not ready to dive into that conversation with Venom yet, so he just nodded and lied. Venom knew he was lying, but thankfully did not pry. The tears started to leak from Eddie’s eyes, then, and Venom kept asking questions, digging around the elephant in the room that Eddie refused to discuss.

 They lay on the couch for hours, quietly sharing emotions and photos in a way that was so natural that Eddie didn’t find it invasive or weird, which would later occur to him was a first. Eddie’s phone rang at 6:00. It was Lewis. He picked up the phone.

 “Eddie Brock.” He said, trying to sound like he hadn’t been crying silently for hours and having one of the deepest therapy sessions of his life with his alien body-mate.

 “Eddie, do you have a comment for the Golden Sun article we’re going to print?” Lewis asked. “Also, are you sure that you got everything you needed? There’s...a lot of blood on some of these notes. It makes it a little hard to read. This is why you shouldn’t use paper.”

  **He’s lucky there’s only blood on the notes.**

 “Ah, yeah. You should have more than enough stuff. The SFPD have copies of everything too, but they won’t publish until we do.” Eddie croaked, trying to ignore Venom, who was bristling just a little at the phone. Venom did not like Lewis very much. “Look, Lewis...I...I’m gonna take some time before coming back in, okay?”

 “Some of the pictures are pretty graphic, are you alright?” Lewis sounded genuinely concerned, to his credit. Eddie nodded weakly.

 “Yeah, I’ll be okay, I just...it was rough.” He said. “Also, if you want a statement, put in ‘The runners of the main ring, which was running a trafficking base remain at large and are probably overseas. At the time of discovery, there were forty-eight children in captivity in the abandoned shipping bay at Pier 52. All children have been taken into the custody of the SFPD or SFHSA.’” He took a shaking breath. “You’d better give me a huge fucking bonus for this one.”

 Lewis was typing rapidly.

 “SFHSA...San Francisco Human Services Agency?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Is that last piece part of the official statement?” Lewis asked, making a half-hearted attempt at a joke.

 “I’m not kidding. I wanted something light after the Life Foundation.” Eddie glanced at Venom, who was oozing on his chest, still glaring at the phone like it had personally offended him.

 “Yeah, I thought it would be an easy case. I’m sorry, Eddie. And thank you.” Lewis said. “You’ll get a bonus based on how many papers we sell after the story breaks.”

 “Alright.” Eddie said. “Thanks.”

 “Talk to you later.” Lewis said. The line clicked, and Eddie put his phone down on the table. He was exhausted beyond belief, and starting to tremble again. The sweat on his skin had cooled long ago, and the salt had started to crystallize, making him nervous and jumpy.

  **Shower.** Venom rumbled.

 Eddie sank deeper into the couch. He was officially done with today, and with everything. The last thing he wanted to do was get up, let alone get naked and cold and then have to wash himself.

 “I don’t think I can move.” He said, hating the whine that snuck into his voice. As he heard it, his exhausted brain kicked its anxiety drive into action, already anticipating a fight with the symbiote. This would all become awkward eventually. They were getting way too close, too fast. It was going to come crashing down, and then he’d be alone again with nothing but his own voice disparaging him and picking out all of his insignificant flaws.

  **Stop being a baby.**

 Eddie shot Venom a glare. The symbiote’s essence sank back into him, as if to emphasize that he was being a baby and that Venom was having none of it.

  **Shower. Our nervous system will fire regularly when our skin is not coated in salt and potassium.**

 “I don’t want to.” Eddie grumbled, being belligerent for belligerence’s sake. Venom rooted into his spinal column and jerked his core muscles, forcing him to sit up. Eddie wheezed a little.

  **We haven’t properly bathed for three days.**

 “What do you care?” Eddie snapped, crossing his arms. “I’ve been busy.”

 It was shocking how quickly he would revert into a child when he felt he was being nagged. Girlfriend after girlfriend after girlfriend had had the same fights with him about taking care of himself. Usually, they would use him taking care of himself as a bargaining chip for sex, which Eddie hadn’t been in the mood for in weeks, and something Venom didn’t understand. After their difference-between-children-and-adults conversation, Eddie was pretty sure symbiotes didn’t even have a concept of sexual reproduction or romantic relationships and the social rules regarding such relationships. He brushed that thought off, and it disappeared into the haze of misery that was still clouding his mind.

  **We’ve been busy**. **Now it is time to take care of us.**

 Eddie sighed. He wasn’t by himself anymore, and Venom had granted him the grace of getting his emotions out in a fairly healthy way. Besides, he knew that it was only about five or ten of these fights in where the other person resigned themselves to caring for an adult baby and just let him wallow in his own misery on a regular basis. He pulled himself up off of the couch and trudged into the bathroom. Venom washed over him with warm, blue happiness, and Eddie felt a little better in spite of himself. If you disregarded the need to consume living flesh, it was pretty easy to keep Venom happy.

 He avoided looking at himself in the mirror—he couldn’t handle the haggard, beaten person he knew he’d find there—and stripped down. His skin prickled with goosebumps in the cold bathroom, and he turned on the shower, burying his hands in his armpits, waiting for the water to get hot.

 Venom poked out of his stomach and looked up at him, opal eyes glistening in the green fluorescent light.

  **It’s bright in here. Turn off the lights.**

 Eddie nodded. His eyes had been aching since they’d gotten home, and now they hurt even more from the prolonged cry session. He shut off the bathroom light and found his way into the shower, tension easing from his body as the steaming water washed over him. He felt a shiver as Venom adjusted to the hot water, unbidden memories of fire and terror racing through his veins.

 “Hey, it’s okay, it’s just water.” He said. “I’m scared of fire too, I won’t let us get burnt.”

  **We won’t let us get burnt.**

 Eddie stood in silence for a while, just letting the water run down his body. Breath in, breath out. It was almost like meditating, or at least what he thought meditating was supposed to be like. After a long time, the water started to cool, so he turned the hot water handle to warm it back up.

 “Do you like the water?” He asked quietly. Venom did not reply out loud, only sending warm waves of yellow contentment up through Eddie’s sore neck. Eddie took that as a ‘yes.’ He reached for the soap and started to wash himself, in no hurry to leave the shower. He hadn’t really thought about it, but his habits had been changing, very slowly. Usually showers were seen as a necessary evil, something to be done quickly or when he was too sore to move so that he could actually sleep. He’d never really gotten into the whole ‘relax while naked in a tiny fiberglass box’ thing. Anne had liked to shower with him, but he’d never understood why. Actually, a lot of girlfriends had liked it. Most of them had just been too shy. Eddie sighed, and shook his head.

  **Eddie, we missed the lower back.**

 Venom pulled the soap from his hand and withdrew to his spine, gently scrubbing his lower back. Eddie was so thrown off by this that he forgot to dwell on his past, and he spun around in the shower, trying to grab the soap from the symbiote, who easily out-maneuvered him.

 “Hey, no scrubbing me, we talked about this.” He said, “It’s weird.”

  **Only because you make it weird. You like it.**

 “I--” Eddie closed his mouth and narrowed his eyes, still spinning and trying to get the soap back. “Just because you like something doesn’t mean you should do it.”

  **Oh?**

 "Yeah, I mean, I like going sixty down Bradford, but I don’t, because I don’t want my driver’s license taken away or having my skin rapidly removed at sixty miles an hour.” Eddie explained.

  **We can go as fast as we want wherever we want. We can heal ourselves, and also outdrive law enforcement.**

 Eddie groaned. Venom’s logic was unbearably simple, but somehow very difficult to reason against. He was too tired for this.

 “Alright, so we can. But that doesn’t mean we should.” He said, still trying to snatch the soap when he thought Venom wasn’t paying attention.

  **Why not?** Venom lifted the soap above his head and he jumped for it unsuccessfully.

 “Because there are rules, rules of polite society--”

  **Rules that are for people weaker and stupider than us.**

 Eddie cringed a little, but couldn’t stop a cheeky half-smile from sneaking onto his face.

 “Rules of polite society that we should follow.”

  **What does this have to do with us washing ourselves?**

 “Ah--” Eddie stopped. “Uh. Well, a rule of polite society is that you don’t wash someone without their permission. Unless they’re a baby or a really sick person.”

  **You are a baby.**

 Eddie slapped a palm over his face with a wet smack.

 “No, like, an actual baby. Like a tiny human.”

  **But we like getting scrubbed.**

 Eddie sighed and turned the water up again. It was getting colder; they’d have to get out soon.

 “...Yes, but...” He flushed just enough to indicate that something had flickered through his subconscious and swallowed hard. “I don’t know, I guess it’s not that weird. But normal roommates don’t scrub each other, okay?”

  **We are not roommates.**

 “Okay, body-mates.”

  **Can we keep scrubbing us?**

 Eddie chewed on his cheek a little, then nodded.

 “Yeah, but only the back, okay? And...And my shoulders. If you want.” His shoulders were extremely tense, they always were, mostly from his neurotic hunching habits.

 Venom resumed washing his back with a tenderness that made Eddie uncomfortable, but he didn’t say anything else. After a moment of self-inflicted awkwardness, he gave up and relaxed. He supposed that it wouldn’t be helpful to dwell on past relationships at this point, because the what he had with Venom was so much weirder and more intimate than any friendship or romantic relationship he’d ever had.

 The symbiote was a nag. A loud, bitchy nag that could be deeply hurtful at times. However, Venom cared about Eddie a lot. Cared about him enough to tell every other symbiote to fuck off and stay on their god-forsaken rock. Cared about Eddie enough to be honest with him. Cared about Eddie enough to ask questions that made him deeply uncomfortable to answer or even think about.

 Cared about him enough to stay with him, even when he tried to throw himself into the black depths of the emotional pit of no return on a weekly basis. Though, it wasn’t so much Venom’s choice as the fact that he needed Eddie to breathe. The poor bastard was stuck with him, for now. Until he found a better host.

  **Water’s cold, Eddie**. Venom said. **Time for bed.**

 “Ah, okay.” He mumbled. The conversation between them had used the last of his energy reserves. He shut the shower off, stepped out, and dried himself. He trudged past the sink before stopping and grabbing his toothbrush. He could feel the symbiote’s smile.

 “Shuddup.” He mumbled through the toothbrush. “It’s only because you wouldn’t leave me alone otherwise.”

 He rinsed his mouth, spit into the sink, and trudged out of the bathroom. The apartment was dark, and he was walking towards the bed, unsure if he was actually holding himself up or if Venom was. They fell onto the bed, and Eddie heard his voice come from him, unbidden.

 “Hey, uh...” He swallowed. “Why me, V?”

  **Why you what?**

 “Why...why me. Like, outta all of the people in the world, why pick me?” He’d asked the question to everyone, at some point in his life, and had gotten a million different answers, all varying degrees of unsatisfying to him. “There’s gotta be a million hosts out there that have better genes for you. Better lives. I just run around and get into trouble.”

 Venom was silent for a moment, and Eddie nervously continued.

 “I mean, not that I’m complaining. You...I don’t know, you’re really great, you know? I...don’t want you to leave.”

  **Thinking**.

 “Ah.” Eddie said, closing his eyes. “Okay. Good night, you amazing thing.”

 He passed out, not waiting for Venom’s answer. Somehow, having the answer take a long time was more rewarding than getting an immediate one that was purposely softened to spare his feelings.

 Venom watched Eddie’s brain fall into its sleep cycles. He did not dream, mostly due to Venom carefully disrupting the neural storms of nightmares from his frontal lobe. The symbiote wrapped itself around Eddie’s brain stem and watched his brain wander through sleep, wondering what he would think of its answer.


	3. Body Image

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I do have a beta now, the lovely Rainripple (https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainripple/pseuds/Rainripple), so much thanks to them for reading over this and providing feedback!
> 
> As usual, the following apply:
> 
> 1) Thank you for reading this.
> 
> 2) You're great and your feedback is great too--positive or negative.
> 
> 3) I was not aware that A03 does not have a PM function, so my PM box is my email: movingshock@mail.com. Use this to send me messages of any type.

* * *

 

**Chapter 3: Body Image**

 

* * *

 

“Oh” Eddie gasped “ohmygod. I—am—goingtodie.”

 

This had been Venom’s idea, to go for a run. He just hadn’t known that the run was going to be across San Francisco. He was sweating so hard that his eyes were beginning to burn from the salt, and he was getting stares from people walking down the street.

 

“Alright, V—V, we gotta stop.”

 

**Two more miles.**

 

“Two more?!” Eddie threw his head back and put his hands over his eyes, much to the alarm of the several cars they just swerved in front of.

 

**We can’t carry your tiny legs all the way, you have to do some of the work.**

 

“I—ran – for five--” Eddie was trying to yell, but he was too winded, so he just burst out “you—asshole!”

 

**Our body’s not going to respond to normal exercise with me inside you. We need more.**

 

“Phrasing! Oh my god. Sorry!” Eddie gasped out as they rolled over the hood of a taxi cab, much to the driver’s horror, and kept running. They’d started their ‘light run’ at five in the morning, an ungodly early time for Eddie. He’d been expecting a light jog around the docks and then back to bed with coffee and a fresh bagel. Instead, he had been coerced across the city in clothes that were now soaked with sweat and clinging to his body. His heart was trying to explode in his chest, and he wasn’t sure if Venom was squeezing it or not to make it pump harder, but it certainly felt like it. His thighs felt like they’d been replaced with bricks of molten lead, and he’d felt better after he’d been hit by a car while riding his bike.

 

It was now six, and rush hour was starting to hit the city hard. While he’d been enjoying the benefits of harboring a symbiote, Eddie was still suffering from major depression, which was affecting them both. Venom hadn’t been wrong when he’d commented on Eddie’s mind-state when they’d first met, and it hadn’t gotten much better since then.

 

Venom was still determined to change that, though, absolutely refusing to live in squalor when he knew first-hand that the human brain made so many delicious, happy chemicals. So, he’d convinced Eddie to do some out-loud reading on neurotic behaviours, depression, and general mental health, as Venom still had trouble looking at English writing and translating it into something he understood. They’d spent every free evening on the couch for the last couple of weeks, a pile of library books next to them as Venom peppered Eddie with questions about certain things, like ‘why do you let people you call your friends treat you poorly?’ and ‘how does exercise help fight chemical deficiencies?’ and ‘can this be solved by eating more bad people?’.

 

The reading hadn’t helped Eddie much, due to the fact that he’d heard the same advice a million times from almost everyone in his life. “Eat better, exercise, find hobbies you love, make a support system, think positive” really started to just get irritating after a while. Plus, whenever those things were the case, he always always found a way to get knocked on his ass again.

 

Still, spending the time with Venom and having semi-intellectual conversation was actually enjoyable, on some level. Eddie had never been able to have a long talk about himself that didn’t end in someone thinking that he was pathetic and needed to be babied. Venom was too concentrated on getting his home to a level of inhabitable to care about how pathetic Eddie was, it seemed.

 

After learning that Eddie liked to go running on occasion, Venom had dragged him out of the dark apartment and onto the cold, foggy street. The fog was starting to burn off as they rounded Alamo Square Park, and Eddie could smell salt in the air again. God, he was hungry. He was so fucking--

 

**Focus!**

 

Eddie growled at the air and kept running. He’d never been big into exercise for exercise's sake, especially after he’d moved to New York. It was useful for looking good, and that was about it. He’d had a few hyper-fit girlfriends who’d always have him doing stuff with them on the weekends. Eddie had tried more sports than he’d cared to think about on dates and with friends, but at the end of the day, he was more comfortable with his nose in a book somewhere quiet than running around after a ball like an idiot. He’d tried to hide that part of himself for many years, going to bars and out with friends, going to the gym, doing the normal Saturday-evening events, but at this point, his life was so fucking weird that, when he wasn’t eating criminals and running all over the bay area collecting stories, he didn’t want to do anything but...well, what he’d always wanted to do.

 

**You would have starved in the old days. Or been a delicious, soft meal.**

 

“You—don’t even know—how to use Google.” Eddie snapped back. Well, do what he wanted to do or what Venom wanted to do. They were heading uphill again, and he was starting to lose his vision as black spots danced in front of his eyes. “Or a computer.”

 

**Computers are pointless.**

 

Eddie rolled his eyes. It wouldn’t kill the symbiote to look something up on his own instead of peppering him endlessly with stupid and invasive questions.

 

**_What is so important about your phone that you need to look at it while you wait for things? Shouldn’t you pay attention to your surroundings while vulnerable?_ **

 

**_That woman is lying to us about how nice we look. Why is she lying to us? Does this mean we can eat her?_ **

 

**_Your left ear is larger than your right ear, but your nerves are more damaged in your left ear. Why?_ **

 

**_Why is there scar tissue under this tattoo, Eddie?_ **

 

That last question had resulted in a two-hour argument about privacy and had ended with Eddie shouting ‘it’s none of your goddamn business’ into the bathroom mirror. Venom had angrily lashed out but had refused to hurt him, instead shattering the mirror into several sharp shards. They hadn’t spoken after that, and Eddie had bitterly laid in bed, trying not to cry himself to sleep while shutting out the symbiote because he knew it was more painful for Venom than for him. Somehow, the idea of hurting Venom hurt him much more than the idea of hurting himself.

 

That had been Tuesday. It had been their second real fight, and Eddie woke up not wanting to wake up, expecting to find the symbiote gone off to a better host. To his surprise, Venom had still been there. He had wrapped himself around Eddie, keeping him warm throughout the night. Eddie had apologized immediately and had started to cry when the symbiote had tenderly stroked his tear-stained, stubble-coated cheeks.

 

**Pussy.** Venom growled at him, and Eddie laughed through his tears. He’d finally gotten out of bed, hiccuping and sniffling, and had taken a hot shower. He let Venom scrub him and didn’t protest once, grateful for the comfort. Venom had lingered over his tattoo in the shower, probing it for something, and Eddie had said nothing. There were a lot of things he still wasn’t ready to talk about, that he had resigned himself to never being able to talk about.

 

Venom abruptly pulled them to the left, and Eddie realized that they were heading uphill again.

 

“Damn it--”

 

**Keep running, Eddie.**

 

They ran up a hill that seemed familiar to Eddie in some way, though he wasn’t sure why. This neighborhood was miles out of his price range for even street space. He hadn’t been to this part of San Francisco in...probably ever? Definitely not since he’d moved back with Anne.  He remembered that there was some fancy douchebag golf course here, and a bunch of rich people. Shit, Carlton Drake probably had a house up here for kicks. Well, at least his estate did, now.

 

**Don’t think about Drake. We killed him.**

 

Eddie winced, gasping for breath as they rounded another hilly corner. Killed was such an...accurate description. Though, he had to admit, part of him that wasn’t Venom was quite satisfied with murdering the guy who’d abducted homeless people, captured, tortured, and then murdered aliens, had plans to let these same aliens take over the Earth, and covered up the wrongful deaths of several employees.

 

They came upon a large medical center, and Eddie thought, because he could no longer speak,

 

_Oh, good, that will be where you can take me when my heart explodes._

 

**Our heart is doing quite well, considering.**

 

Eddie gave a breathless snort, but dug into the run. He was starting to get that rush, now, that felt like adrenaline. He was tingling all over, and the world was starting to fade out. His concerns and fears and worries seemed to melt away, and there was only the pounding of his his heart and the faint whisper of air rushing past his ears.

 

**It’s called an ‘endorphin rush’.** Venom said. **You might not be familiar with it, it’s been a while since our body’s released that naturally.**

 

Eddie was very familiar with the term ‘endorphin rush’. Endorphins were these stupid hormones that were supposed to make you happy. They were what got you hooked on drugs and alcohol. They were one of those things that were supposed to cure his chronic lifestyle problems and poor choices.

 

Now the fog was burning off the city, and they were reaching the crest of what appeared to be a park. Eddie knew they were near the ocean, because he could smell the salt in the air and hear the roar of the waves crashing into the beach. When they reached the top, he kept running. Everything was hurting less, now, and he ran to the lookout and down one of the trails. He knew where Venom had been taking them now: to the ocean. The symbiote loved the ocean. He constantly dragged Eddie there at every opportunity. They ran down the cliff, Venom catching Eddie when he tripped, and ended on the beach. Eddie collapsed onto the cold, grey sand, and looked at the blank sky. His chest heaved up and down, and he couldn’t keep the relieved grin off of his face.

 

Venom was riding the high with him and seemed very pleased with himself. He took form outside of Eddie and peered at him, a wicked grin on his shapeless face.

 

**Feel better?**

 

“No,” Eddie laughed, “I feel high. Really fucking high.” He flopped his arms in the sand and smiled up at Venom.

 

“High...on life.” Venom said, snatching some viral advertisement memory out of Eddie’s brain. Eddie giggled, and Venom jerked back a little, surprised at the sound.

 

“I am going to die tomorrow.” Eddie said. “I am going to be so sore.”

 

**We feel good now.**

 

“Ah, we do.” Eddie sighed, ecstasy dimming into a quiet simmer of joy. “We really do.”

 

Venom sank back into Eddie, and they both shivered at the sudden, intimate contact. Eddie was burning hot, inside and out. They lay on the beach for a while, listening to the waves flow in and out, to the cold whistle of the late fall wind, and to the cry of gulls as they searched for food. Eddie’s breath came slowly, in and out. The fog continued to burn off, and the sky slowly went from grey and heavy to blue and expansive.

 

“We’re not gonna have to do that every day, are we?” Eddie finally asked. “The run?”

 

**No.** Venom said. The run had been a test to see how far Eddie’s body needed to be pushed before it would release those chemicals on its own. Eddie had extremely high endurance and tolerance for pain and discomfort, so it took a lot of prolonged physical abuse before Eddie’s endocrine system would start distributing natural painkillers. Venom knew this just by tasting the blood rushing to Eddie’s brain. It was full of endorphins (purple). Dopamine, Norepinephrine, serotonin, adrenaline (white, blue, green, yellow). Ten miles when the average was three. Three and one-third times the normal stress rate for reward systems. Venom could work with that.

 

“You aren’t gonna make me promise to exercise for thirty minutes a day?” Eddie said, half-joking.

 

**No.** Venom said.

 

“Well, good.” Eddie actually felt a little disappointment at that, but he brushed it off, too tired to really fixate on the imagined rejection.

 

“Hey, so we ran all the way here.” Eddie said. “How are we gonna get back? Cause I can’t move.”

 

**We’ll take us back.**

 

“No eating people. And stay off the main streets”

 

**Where’s the trust? We’re feeling like a swim anyway.**

 

And just like that, Eddie was pulled up like a puppet and balanced on his feet. He couldn’t really feel much at this point, so Venom stood for them and dragged him towards the water, taking over. Venom slid over his face, enclosing him in warmth. They were one, and it felt good.

 

**“Rest now, Eddie.”** Venom said, splashing into the icy waves. **“We need to eat.”**

 

–

 

“So,” Lewis said. “You’re back.”

 

“Yeah.” Eddie said, staring down at the man with his arms crossed. He was holding himself. He hadn’t meant for the meeting to be confrontational, but it had somehow turned out this way. “I am. Do you have any work?”

 

The Golden Sun story broke a few weeks ago, and Eddie had been filling his time off with freelance work for various small magazines and papers around town. He’d gotten a pretty handsome cut from the Globe, and it had been enough to pay rent for more than a few months.

 

“Your time off did you well, I see.” Lewis said. “You look better.”

 

Eddie frowned, then looked down, trying to figure out what improvements Lewis had imagined. He didn’t feel that much better. He’d been going for long runs about once a week, on top of vigilante work with Venom. There hadn’t been much in the city lately, because after the Golden Sun story had broken, criminals had decided to stay indoors for a bit. It wasn’t due to the journalism part of the story, unfortunately, though Eddie wanted to believe that it was. It had more to do with the seven-foot man-eater that was Eddie Brock’s shadow. People in San Francisco were learning that if you were a bad person, a really bad person, or even just a normal person who did bad things, you were going to go missing and have a very, very bad day. Venom had been pestering him for food more and more, so he’d been eating a little better, going out to get live fish and crustaceans so that Venom could eat something besides his organs.

 

**We like the lobster the best.**

 

“Too expensive.” Eddie whispered.

 

“What?” Lewis asked, fixing him with a sharp look.

 

**U-naaaah-geeeee. Sounds like ‘delicious’, too.**

 

“Sorry, just talking to myself.” Eddie said. “What were you saying?”

 

Lewis went on about the subsequent fallout from the Golden Sun trafficking story, and Eddie tried to get Venom to stop sending him pictures of eels over their connection.

 

“Anyway, Eddie, we’re a bit slow right now, but if you want some work, we do have a report on a homeless shelter that was closed down recently. We have reason to think that it wasn’t closed down properly.”

 

“Something simple? Code violations?” Eddie asked.

 

**Bad guys?**

 

“Yeah, it should be simple.” Lewis said. “We already had a newbie do some preliminary investigation before we decided to pass this story to you. The reporter’s name’s Zoey Stone. She works on the second floor. Go talk to her to get debriefed.”

 

Eddie headed downstairs, ignoring Venom’s excited questions the whole time.

 

**Do we get to eat someone? Code violations sound pretty serious.**

“No, we don’t get to eat anyone.” Eddie said. “If we’re lucky, we might get beat up a little.”

 

Hrmph. Venom huffed and went to go sulk in a corner of Eddie’s mind. Eddie reached out across their connection and sent soft white waves of comfort to him. He’d been so good, and the last couple of weeks had been pretty rough for the symbiote. Venom was chronically cranky and short with him out of hunger, and Eddie had taken to gently stroking his neck and forearms to comfort himself and, by proxy, comfort Venom.

 

They found their way to the second floor, which was a cubicle bullpen, littered with young, excited journalists. Eddie sighed a little as he navigated the chaotic floor, not noticing the odd looks and whispers that followed him. He was so glad he was freelance. He didn’t get a steady salary, but the risk of starvation really dimmed in comparison to having to spend fifty hours a week trapped in a grey cube with a group of obnoxious morons.

 

_“Is that Eddie Brock?”_ Not-so-subtle whispers echoed behind him.

_“Yeah, I think so.”_

_“I heard he lost his mind, went crazy for a while.”_

_“Well, if Carlton Drake set out to ruin your life, you’d probably lose it too.”_

 

And so on.

 

**Eddie, they’re talking about us.** Venom growled. **We should eat them.**

 

“Shh,” Eddie murmured, gently rubbing his cheek. He sent Venom a memory of a National Geographic with a farm-to-table article he knew Venom would find engaging, with the promise that they would get some Unagi if he was quiet during the debrief.

 

Zoey Stone was at her desk, a pair of vintage oversized headphones strapped to her head. She was chewing gum, and had bright red hair put up in a high ponytail, something Eddie particularly liked. Well, he liked blondes and redheads. But, that was neither here nor there. He was here to talk business.

 

“Hey, uh, Zoey?” He tapped on her desk and she jumped violently, turning around, already glaring. Her eyes widened, though, as she saw who was tapping on her cubicle wall.

 

“Oh!” She said, too loudly, taking her headphones off and standing up. She was wearing grey tights and a black skirt that hung to her knees. She was in an Iron Maiden t-shirt, which Eddie internally raised an eyebrow at.

 

“Holy shit, you’re Eddie Brock. Joseph said you might come by, but I wasn’t—uh--” She stuck her hand out awkwardly. “Nice to meet you.”

 

Eddie shook her hand. “The one and only.” He said, smiling wryly. This was weird, she was pretty cute. And really awkward. She reminded him of Anne from a very long time ago. She blushed, and looked down.

 

“Uh, so, you’re probably here about the Beds for Heads shelter, right?” Zoey said.

 

“Uh, yeah, do you...here, let me just write down what you have.” Eddie pulled his notepad out of his pocket and a pen. Zoey blinked.

 

“Uh, if you have an email address, I can just forward you the package?” Zoey said. “Or Facebook, or something.”

 

Eddie held back a derisive snort. Ever since he’d gotten locally famous, he’d disconnected from almost all social media, except for when he was investigating individuals. The Eddie Brock Report had a twitter account. Edward Charles Allen Brock did not. As for email, he had a pretty firm ‘no strangers’ policy, especially after he’d been burned in New York. If the wrong people get your personal information, it can really ruin your life. He’d learned that the hard way more than once.

 

“Nah, I usually only take hardcopies. If you have notes, can you print them off? Or just give me a flash drive with the information?”

 

“Oh, yeah, sure.” Zoey sat back down at her desk. “Uh,” She glanced over her shoulder. “Do you want to sit down? I have a chair, but, uh.” The chair was buried under several binders.  “Maybe not. I can move things, if you want to sit down.”

 

**We should go nap. Are we done yet?**

 

Apparently, Venom had finished the article. He had finally learned to read and was getting better at it, though he was still damned slow. Eddie sent Venom another food-related article so that the symbiote would shut up.

 

“I can stand. It’s okay.” Eddie said, putting on his charming TV smile. He hated that he had one, but he used it more often than he’d like to get places that he shouldn’t be allowed into. It put people at ease, for some reason. Probably because his normal face looked like someone had just died in front of him. The TV smile worked on Zoey like a charm. She smiled and laughed. Eddie felt a slight pang in his chest. How long had it been since he’d had a real conversation with an attractive member of the opposite sex?

 

**Since Anne dumped us. She still wants to see us, by the way. We should call her and ask her out to dinner.** Venom chimed in, helpfully. Eddie rolled his eyes. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

 

**You’re welcome. This article is boring.**

 

Eddie shook Venom off and took the flash drive that Zoey was offering him.

 

“Thanks!” He said, a little too loudly to drown out the growling monster in the back of his mind.

 

Zoey blushed at little.

 

“No problem, Mr. Brock.” She said. “Hope you figure out what’s going on with the shelter, It was a really weird case.”

 

“Oh, just call me Eddie.” Eddie said, hating himself just a little bit more the longer he talked to this girl. She was cute, though, and she seemed pretty interested in him.

 

**Of course she seems interested. She thinks you’re brilliant. If only she knew the truth.**

 

Eddie felt his sense of self-confidence deflate at that. How could he expect to date anyone when he had an alien baby throwing tantrums in the back of his mind? He wasn’t ready for this. He was barely ready to have a job.

 

_Parasite._ He thought spitefully, shaking Zoey’s hand once more and telling her to have a good day. She looked a little crestfallen, but he walked out of the bullpen quickly, swirls of Venom trailing in his footsteps.

 

The bike ride home was sullen. Venom was sulking again, and Eddie felt hunger gnawing at them both. When he arrived home, he opened the fridge to find a half-empty carton of milk and a jar of pickles. He sighed.

 

“Alright, you big whiner.” He said. “What do you want tonight? You blew it on the eel, so don’t even think about trying to get me to eat something live.”

 

**Brains. Or Chocolate?**

 

“Chocolate it is.” Eddie said, closing the refrigerator door.

 

–

 

Mrs. Chen had happily given Venom several bars of chocolate for free, something that actually made Eddie a little bit jealous. Ever since they’d eaten the asshole that had been using her store as an ATM, she’d been much sweeter to them both, though she had an obvious preference for the symbiote, who would talk through Eddie to her about the most mundane things. Mostly about where to get the best live seafood in the area and, of course, criminals. Mrs. Chen was quite the cook, it turned out, and Venom adored her.

 

They’d wandered back to their apartment, Eddie still in a stormy mood. He felt like shit, he realized.

 

**Brilliant observation.**

 

“Hey, I don’t need any more piss from you right now.” Eddie grumbled. He was crashing hard. Some days with Venom were bad. They fed off of one another, and when one of them was doing badly, it was really easy to fall into an exhausting, toxic cycle where they just snapped at one another until one of them finally ended up throwing a tantrum. They made it to the couch, and Eddie laid down, opening his laptop. At least they had television. The apartment was cold and damp, and there was a chill that had settled into his bones on the bike ride home that wouldn’t go away. Venom rustled through the plastic bag that had their dinners in it, and in what was most likely a gesture of goodwill, put the roast beef sandwich that Eddie had bought up on his chest.

 

Eddie sighed, and then opened the sandwich.

 

“Thanks.” He said. “Wanna pick what we watch?”

 

**Like Water For Chocolate.**

 

Eddie snorted. “I keep telling you, it’s not about chocolate. You wouldn’t get it anyway, it’s about love.”

 

**We know about love. We love us.**

 

Eddie rolled his eyes. Venom wouldn’t know love if it bit him in the...well, wherever the appropriate body part was. He put on some mindless romantic comedy and smiled just a little bit as Venom happily watched the movie, commenting every so often on odd things and asking endless questions.

 

**Why does he keep her locked up in the hotel room all day? She would get lonely, certainly.**

 

“Well, he’s a lawyer, like Anne, so he has to go to work.”

 

**Why can’t she come with him?**

 

“Because she’s a prostitute.”

 

**Prostitute?**

 

“Someone who uh...entertains people for money.” Eddie tried not to picture the quintessential prostitute, which he knew would lead to more questions.

 

**Like a clown.**

 

Eddie snorted and shuddered a little. He hated clowns, and he knew that Venom knew that he hated clowns and therefore hated clowns as well. He liked this part of their relationship, at least. Venom asked so many questions due to genuine curiosity. It actually reminded him of a younger version of himself.

 

He looked down, and realized that Venom was gently stroking the tattoo on his arm. He pulled away a little, and sighed when the symbiote followed. Venom was clearly absorbed in the movie, so it wasn’t happening on purpose.

 

“Hey, V,” He said.

 

**Quiet. She’s yelling at him.**

 

Eddie rolled his eyes, and took another bite of his sandwich. Dead meat didn’t disgust him as much any more, especially now that Venom had a regular supply of food. They mostly ate a vegetarian diet unless, of course, they were devouring live animals—and people. Still, he had human, very human, cravings. Tonight’s craving had been for roast beef, and Venom had begrudged him while happily letting Mrs. Chen talk at them about all the shitty preservatives they put in meat nowadays.

 

It had taken a good portion of Eddie’s self-control to not mutter something snarky about all the shitty preservatives they put in people nowadays. He watched the movie absently with Venom, for a while, before the symbiote turned to look at him, its shiny opal eyes small.

 

**You are bored.**

 

Eddie smiled a little bit and finished his sandwich.

 

“Not my type of movie.” He said. “But you seem to be enjoying yourself, so go on.”

 

The symbiote turned back to the movie, glancing over its shoulder doubtfully, then turning back when Eddie gently touched his head. Venom purred just a little, and then went back to gently massaging Eddie’s tattoo. After a long, drawn-out declaration of love that was completely unbelievable, the movie ended, and Eddie sighed and stretched.

 

“Time for bed, huh?” He said. Venom looked at him for a moment, then sank into his chest.

 

**Liked the movie.**

 

“Good.” Eddie said. “I’m surprised you liked it.”

 

**Hungry, Eddie.**

 

Venom said it with such resignation that it hurt. Eddie could feel the exhaustion that Venom was trying to stave off for the both of them. It came in waves, like liquid sleep washing over him. He felt a little more guilty about being snappy today.

 

“We can’t go out tonight.” He said. “Come here.”

 

Eddie coaxed Venom from his chest, and held the symbiote in his arms. It did not take a physical form, instead cuddling against him and shaking in a way that broke Eddie’s heart.

 

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Eddie murmured, so low that only Venom would ever hear him say it. “I know it hurts.”

 

**Tired.**

 

“It’s okay, just eat off of me tonight.”

 

**Hate eating you.**

 

“I’ll be fine.” Eddie said. “Just nibble on my liver, okay? I’m not using it anymore anyway.”

 

He had stopped drinking since Venom had moved in, since the symbiote just cleaned up any alcohol and consumed it without a thought, completely taking away any point of drinking at all, in Eddie’s mind. While Venom liked alcohol (cheap energy, he’d said), Eddie had quickly given up on drinking altogether once he realized that he would probably never be drunk again.

 

He shut off the lights, carried Venom to the bed and lay down, still holding the trembling mass to his chest. He pulled the blankets over them and curled up on his side. They usually slept the other way around, with Venom holding Eddie. The city was unusually quiet tonight, and the fog hung thick over their neighborhood, shrouding everything in privacy and silence.

 

“Do you still want to know about my arm?” Eddie asked.

 

**Yes. Want to know about all the tissue formations.**

 

Eddie sighed a little, then traced the scar under his tattoo. Most days he forgot it was there.

 

“It’s from...a bottle, actually. Well, glass.”

 

**Glass?**

 

“Yeah.” Eddie swallowed, his chest feeling a little tight. Had he ever told anyone this? Not while sober, he knew that much. “Uh, when I was little, my mom died.” He paused again. “She died while giving birth to me, actually.”

 

Venom was quiet, though Eddie could feel his curiosity and knew his silence wasn’t out of a lack of interest, so he continued.

 

“So...my dad, he...I don’t know, he never really forgave me for it, I guess.” Eddie snorted. “Like it’s a kid’s fault if his mom dies.”

 

**You have two parents?**

 

“Yeah. It’s a human thing. Actually, it’s an animal thing, mostly. I think some plants, too.” Eddie said. “I’ll uh, I’ll tell you some other time.”

 

**Hm.**

 

“So, yeah, my dad...I dunno, he had problems with me. For a long time. Still does, actually.” Eddie swallowed again. This was a shockingly difficult discussion. “So uh, when I was seventeen, I was...I was a total nerd, actually. In the goodie-two-shoes way, not the loser way.”

 

**Our loser.** Venom sent him a misguided surge of protective affection. The anxiety in Eddie’s chest wavered a little.

 

“I know.” He let Venom wrap a few tendrils around his fingers and gave a gentle squeeze. “But, anyway, I came home late one night. I was dropping one of my friend **s** off at their friend’s, since I had a bike, and we’d gotten caught up in a stupid argument or something, and I’d lost track of time.”

 

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing the memory to stay shut in his mind. It threatened to burst open, like an infected wound, and spill sickness everywhere. He couldn’t do that to them right now, though, because Venom was already weak, and if he couldn’t feed them, they’d both collapse completely.

 

“And, my dad, he was home.” Eddie laughed a little, but he could feel himself going cold. “He was never home at night, he was usually down at some bar or out at a club with his idiot friends getting shitfaced.”

 

**Shitfaced?**

 

“Drunk.” Eddie said. “But yeah, he decided to get shitfaced at home that night. I guess it was mom’s birthday. So, he started yelling at me when I came in, because I’d missed curfew.”

 

He swallowed again, but his mouth had gone dry, so his throat stuck to itself and he coughed.

 

“Usually, he’d just ignore me, but I guess he had decided that tonight it was time to let loose.” He finally croaked. “And, you know, all I ever wanted as a kid was for my dad to notice me in a good way, or say...something nice. I would kill myself to get perfect grades, and get on sports teams, and have good friends, but it was never enough. And that night, it just made me so mad, you know? Because I came home on time every night when that idiot was out getting plastered.”

 

Venom was prying now, and it was making it even harder to tell the story. Poking at their barrier, trying to get the video feed with the audio, but Eddie refused to let him in.

 

“So, I guess by that time I was pretty fed up with his shit.” Eddie said, “When he started yelling at me that night, I started yelling back, and I made him so mad that he brought down a whisky bottle on me. I put my arms up to stop him from hitting me in the face, and the bottle broke.”

 

**The glass.**

 

“Yeah.” Eddie shuddered. A single black and white feeling of cold pain racing through his arms as he’d held them over his face raced through them. “And, he was too drunk to know what he’d done, really. He just wandered off, still yelling.”

 

**What did you do next?**

 

Eddie opened his eyes and looked at the long scar under his tattoo in the dark.

 

“I don’t know. I remember freaking out, because I had this giant gash in my arm, and I was so mad and scared of getting in more trouble for bleeding everywhere. So I just left. I remember riding my bike to Betty’s, and basically passing out on her front porch, sobbing.”

 

**Who is Betty?**

 

Eddie could share that. He sent Venom image after image of his grandmother, taking him home from school, walking with him in the park, giving him books and taking care of him when he was sick or when no one else was around.

 

**Oh. We like Betty.**

 

“We do.” He said. He realized that he’d started to sniffle, and he bit down on his lip to keep the tears back. “She—she was miraculous.”

 

**The scar is from one of your bearers.**

 

“My dad.” Eddie said, still fighting tears. It felt much worse to say those things out loud. “Betty stitched me up herself, right in her kitchen after she called 911. The medic in the ambulance—she told me he said it was the best stitch job he’d ever seen. I spent a day in the hospital getting a blood transfusion. I...lied and said that I’d been mugged, and--” He swallowed down a sob. “I think Betty always knew what had happened.”

 

Venom was insisting now, begging for a memory, for access to the full story. Eddie finally relented, having shared all he wanted to verbally. Venom watched the memory with him, and Eddie’s head swam with the amplified feedback of emotions. Anger, indignation, hurt, shame. Red. So much red. His father’s face, more vivid than it had been in years, twisted with rage and hatred. His burgundy blood staining the front room rug and running through his fingers like water. The dizzy rush of adrenaline and the acrid smell of gasoline as he got back on his bike. Whining in his ears as he raced towards his Grandmother’s, running red lights and stop signs. Tossing the bike down in front of her house and collapsing hard on the front steps, his own sobs faint in his ears as blood loss drained the reality out of the quiet city street in front of him and gave him tunnel vision. Falling into darkness as the wail of an ambulance rang in his ears. Waking up in the hospital to his grandmother asleep in a chair next to him, her wrinkled hand gently clasping his. Thick bandages coating his right arm, and the realization that he might not be able to go home this time, because Dad might actually try to kill him if he did. Getting a tattoo designed to hide texture over the scar a few years later because it bothered him so much that he’d let someone else mark him up that way. Racing pricks of pain as the tattoo needle buzzed over the knotted tissue. Itching as the skin healed. His girlfriend’s immense displeasure when she saw that he’d gotten the tattoo without asking her first.

 

Venom took it all in, replaying the memory at hyper-speed, over and over again. No detail was left unobserved. Finally, after a long time, he spoke, gently wiping the tears that were leaking out of Eddie’s closed eyes.

 

**We can make the scar go away forever, Eddie.**

 

Eddie considered it, then shook his head.

 

“Nah.” He said. “I’ll keep them, all of them, as a reminder.”

 

**But you tried to hide it. You were ashamed. You are ashamed now.**

 

“I didn’t want anyone else to know.” He said. “People...I’m already a charity case. I didn’t need more fuel for the fire. I tried to reinvent myself in New York, become someone besides Edward Brock. And for a while, it worked. I was successful. I had Annie, I had a job, a good place to live, I was going to get married,” He choked out a laugh. “It was all going to work out, finally. All the stuff before was just a bad dream.”

 

Venom was silent for a long time, still wiping Eddie’s tears away.

 

**Sometimes, things happen to us.** It finally said. **Things we don’t understand. Things we can’t control. When we can’t control it, we try to justify it, blame ourselves for what happened, try to find what we could have done instead to make things turn out differently. But.**

 

Venom paused again.

 

**Sometimes, on rare occasions, we truly are powerless, and to admit that...is frightening. We have lived your memory, and to come home to something that unstable...there is no power for you there. You were right to leave, to be angry, to shout at him.**

 

**On Klyntar, parents would turn on their offspring when times were hard, when there was no food, when there were no hosts.**

 

**But we never blamed ourselves for this. It was the error of the parent, to have brought something into the world that could not be sustained. If the child killed its bearer, then no harm befell the child; there was only disdain for the parent and its poor choice.**

 

Eddie sniffed and wiped his eyes.

 

“Yeah, you have problems with your dad too?”

 

Venom chuckled, though it was shaky. The symbiote was still reeling from sharing so much emotion with Eddie.

 

**Did not know parent. Shunned by all from the beginning. There was something very wrong with mind. An...outsider, looking in, mostly.**

 

“Ah,” Eddie recalled the loser dialogue they’d had before facing Riot. “I’m...I’m sorry, V.”

 

**There is nothing to be sorry about. It was truly out of control and, in a way, think this was better. Stronger.**

 

Venom was radiating righteous anger, now, and Eddie could only do so much to hold him back.

 

**We were weak, once, and now we have us. We were dying. Now we are strong, so strong, because of you. You did this for us, Eddie. We don’t want anyone else but you, as you are.**

 

Eddie felt his heart throbbing in his chest, and sat up. Venom was writhing in him, suddenly in a fervor, and his exhaustion seemed to have disappeared. Something about the memory had gotten Venom fired up.

 

They spoke as one, in a single moment, as they both decided to promise their other something.

 

**“We will protect us.”**

 

And like that, Eddie was up and out the window in the heavy San Francisco night air, Venom wrapped around him in a second skin.

 

–

 

They washed up on a beach at three in the morning, spent but full. Eddie rolled into the symbiote’s black embrace, still unsure of what to think about how the evening had gone. He’d never shared that story with anyone. It had been one of the worst experiences of his childhood that he bore physical scars from, and he hated to talk about it. Now that he’d had some time to think while Venom hunted down an alarming amount of shellfish at the bottom of the bay, he realized that talking about it hadn’t really made the memories hurt more. If anything, they hurt less.

 

Perhaps it had been Venom’s thoughtful response in place of his usual sarcasm, the fact that he had chosen to be vulnerable instead of guarded, to share instead of hide, that was making him feel relief. The burden was no longer his to hold alone; there was someone to share it with.

 

The feeling of no **t** feeling was, he thought as he passed back into the void that was Venom, truly freeing.

 

–

They walked past a large shiny window in downtown later that month, and Eddie caught a glimpse of himself. He hadn’t really seen himself for a while, since they’d broken their mirror and still hadn’t had a chance to get a new one. He looked...different, he noticed. Still exhausted as hell and burnt out, but...the weight around his eyes was beginning to move away. He was smiling more.

 

**Are you done preening? We are going to be late.**

 

“Hey, I’m not the one that broke the mirror.” Eddie said, still peering at himself. “Have you been doing weird things to me?”

 

**Define ‘weird’.**

 

“I dunno, I look...younger.” Eddie said, completely oblivious to the slightly scornful looks he was getting from passerby as he peered at his face.

 

**Your cells are aging normally. Not altering their life-cycles.**

 

“Huh.” Eddie stared for a little longer, then smiled at himself. His smile turned genuine as he saw his eyes wrinkle just a little, and he laughed.

 

“You might not be so bad for me after all, buddy.” He said.

 

**We are only as good as our host.**

 

Eddie flushed just a little, and looked away from the window, turning his eyes to the ground. It started to rain, and he turned up his jacket collar against the winter morning chill.

 

“Well,” He said, glaring up the steps of the city hall, “You make me want to be good too. Ready to go mess with the wrong people?”

 

**Always.** Venom rumbled in Eddie’s head, almost laughing.

  



	4. Self-Reflection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie and Venom face their biggest challenge of all--plot development. /meta

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! This chapter was beta'd by the lovely Rainripple (https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainripple/pseuds/Rainripple), so much thanks to them for reading over this and providing feedback!
> 
> As usual, the following apply:
> 
> 1) Thank you for reading this.
> 
> 2) You're great and your feedback is great too--positive or negative. 
> 
> 3) PM me via my email if you don't feel comfortable posting in the comments: movingshock@mail.com

**Chapter 4: Self-Reflection**

* * *

 

 

**CITY FORCES CLOSURE OF HOMELESS SHELTER TO MAKE WAY FOR MORE CONDOS.**

 

Eddie grinned at the headline and held the Sunday edition of the Globe up in front of his face.

 

“It looks good, right?” He said. “Look, that was a photograph I took, can you believe they used it?”

 

**We took.**

 

Venom materialized out of Eddie’s shoulder to peer at the paper, a small black face oozing out of Eddie’s weather-worn motorcycle jacket.

 

**You seem to be obscenely proud of this small accomplishment for someone who saved your sad race from annihilation only a year ago.**

 

“Hey, it’s all about taking it one day at a time.” Eddie said. “And, let’s be honest, saving the planet didn’t get us a dime.”

 

**How about we buy a lime? Or make up a rhyme?**

 

“Oh, shut up.” Eddie put the paper under his arm and hoisted their grocery basket up a little higher. Grocery shopping had become less of an athletic event now that Eddie had a (somewhat) steady income. They used to have to skip from store to store, hunting for the appropriate bargain shelves to scrounge up whatever manager’s special they could find. Now, the black mark on Eddie’s name was slowly fading away with the end of Drake, and he was finally able to get a steady stream of freelance work from multiple sources, though most online journals and magazines asked him to use a pen name or worse, ghostwrite pieces. Eddie was proud, but he wasn’t so proud that he would let himself starve over something as trivial as whose name was on the piece he wrote.

 

The Globe, though, would stand by him, which, in Eddie’s mind, was the least they could do after all of the good work he’d done for them. His reputation was slowly healing, which made him a happy host and kept many of his neurotic tendencies at bay.

 

They wandered through the dry goods section, and Venom nudged Eddie towards a plastic tower of kidney beans, which was something they could both agree on. Eddie still couldn’t understand the symbiote’s dietary cravings. So far, they’d figured out that live shellfish, many types of beans (soy especially), and cheeses would satisfy Venom in the same way that live human meat did. Eddie had tried to figure out what these items had in common, but had so far been unsuccessful in his attempts to find their connection. The best he could figure was high protein content. Though, Venom loved soybeans much more than eggs.

 

“Maybe estrogen?” Eddie wondered aloud, looking at the kidney beans. He snickered a little at the idea of his symbiote needing a heavy supply of estrogen to function.

 

 **We have plenty of that. Maybe even an excess.** Venom said. That shut Eddie right up, and he tried to swallow away embarrassment as he dropped two pounds of dry beans into the grocery basket. To fight off the surge of insecurity that had risen in his chest after Venom’s innocent observation of his sex hormone levels, he sank back into a few of the pieces he’d been writing for some local alternative papers. Small stuff, mostly on rent prices and cultural corners of the city, but it helped to get in touch with everyone. Eddie loved writing for local special interest papers, mostly because it gave him great contacts for when he was trying to dig up information that had been purposely hidden from the public’s eye. Also, he got to know people around the city, which, in the past, had made him feel less lonely, and now gave Venom a sample of humanity that Eddie felt he desperately needed.

 

He let Venom guide them through the store, still lost in thought. This, unfortunately, turned out to be a massive mistake.

 

**Anne!**

 

“Eddie?”

 

Eddie’s head snapped up, and he found himself staring at his ex-fiance in the goddamn freezer isle, of all places.

 

Oh, god, no.

 

It wasn’t that Eddie had been avoiding Anne, it was more that he had been...purposely not going near the old house and keeping himself just busy enough with other things so that he didn’t have time to see her or her new boyfriend.

 

Anne looked...happy to see him. Eddie felt a smile slide onto his face as she put her basket down and hugged him. The sudden closeness to another human and the smell of her shampoo caught him in a haze of nostalgia, and longing that he’d been trying to quash for months rose to the surface of his psyche in seconds. Ohhh, this was not good.

 

“Eddie, how are you? It’s been a while!” She said.

 

“Annie!” He said. His voice sounded weird, oh man, his voice sounded _weird_.

 

 **Ask her to dinner.** Venom said helpfully.

 

 _Shut up, you psycho._ Eddie shouted inside his own head.

 

**She’ll say yes if you ask her.**

 

“You look really great!” Anne said, and Eddie could tell by the creases around her eyes that she wasn’t lying, which surprised him. “How are you?”

 

“Uh, good. Good.” Eddie said. “I’ve been writing for a lot of people, but the most prominent articles are with the Globe still. I don’t know if you’re still following any of my stuff?”

 

“Oh yeah, I follow them on Twitter. I saw that you had that interview—the one you told me about—or, at least, told me you couldn’t tell me about. Cletus Kasidy? I can’t believe that!” Anne sighed. “It’s been too long, really, I’ve just been so busy, with Dan, and work--”

 

“Oh, yeah, uh, I’ve been busy too.” Eddie laughed, but even to him it sounded fake.

 

 **Busy pining over Annie.** Venom teased, and Eddie had never wanted to strangle his body-made more than at that moment.

 

“Are you free this week? You could come over and have dinner with us.” Anne said. She looked him up and down in a way that made Eddie’s ears flush again. She hadn’t looked at him like that since they’d started dating so many years ago. He must really look different. Hope leapt desperately in his chest, and before he knew what he was doing, he was nodding his head.

 

“Uh, yeah, I think I’m free on Thursday?”

 

“Oh, great, Dan’s not on call that night! Do you want to come over to our—er, the house for dinner?”

 

“Uh,” Eddie hesitated. He was being pulled in too many directions at once, and he didn’t know what the right move was. Venom, on the other hand, did not hesitate at all.

 

“Yes!” He said through Eddie, much to Eddie’s horror. Anne raised an eyebrow for half a second before shaking the weird intonation to Eddie’s voice off as nothing.

 

“Okay, I’ll text you later in the week with a time. It was really good to see you.” She said, picking up her basket.

 

“Uh, you too.” Eddie said weakly. “See you later.”

 

“Bye!” Anne said, giving him a quick wave before walking down the isle and disappearing around a corner. Eddie waited half a second to make sure she wasn’t coming back before turning to one of the glass doors of the freezer section and whisper-shouting at Venom’s reflection,

 

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

 

“ **Don’t blame us, Eddie, you are the one who wants her back.”** Venom said, staring at Eddie. Its pale, opalescent eyes shone in the glare of the glass door and betrayed the slightest hint of concern behind its vacant grin.

 

“Don’t put this on me. Don’t put this on me, you selfish--” Eddie put his hands over his eyes, turned away from the freezer door for a moment and then forced them back to his sides and turned back. “Do you know how to fuck up my life?”

 

“ **Make you decide between sleeping in and being on time for interviews?”**

 

“I--” Eddie stopped for a moment, tried not to laugh, remembered that he was furious, and glared at Venom. “No! Bring an ex back in to my life after she’s out of it. They’re exes for a reason.”

 

“ **Maybe the reason was a mistake.”** Venom said. “ **Maybe it was your mistake.”**

 

“I—yes, it was my mistake.” Eddie hissed, throwing his hands up. “I’ll take full fucking blame for fucking up the best relationship of my life, and I have already, but some things just can’t be fixed! You can’t just un-fuck something up, especially--” He clenched his jaw. “Especially if the mistake is something you don’t regret.”

 

“ **You don’t regret ruining your stable, happy life with a woman that you loved?”** Venom asked.

 

All the fight went out of Eddie at that question, and he sagged against the glass, pressing his forehead against the cold door. After a moment, he opened his eyes and found the symbiote’s opal eyes in the reflection.

 

“As much as I want to say that I do,” He finally said, looking steadily at Venom in a way that the symbiote found a little unnerving. “I don’t.”

 

“Hey, man, if you’re done telling your life story to the hungry man meals, can I get by?” A guy in jean shorts and a scraggly beard interrupted. Eddie looked over at him, then sighed and shrugged, grabbing his basket and stalking down the isle. They bought their groceries and walked home in the cold winter mist. Eddie remained silent for the rest of the night, lost in thought. Venom tried to get him to talk a few times, but eventually gave up and sulked in a corner of Eddie’s mind, radiating blue-grey isolation and unhappiness. Eddie coaxed Venom out of him and laid on the bed, stroking the symbiote’s mass. He was still distracted, but he wanted Venom to know that he wasn’t in trouble.

 

“Sorry I lost it in the store.” Eddie finally said, as he was falling asleep. “Seeing Anne...it was really unexpected.”

 

 **We can still get her back, Eddie**.

 

“That’s the thing.” Eddie said after a long silence, his eyes drifting closed. “I...I don’t think I want her back.”

 

 **We’re still lonely**. **You still love her**.

 

Eddie pulled the symbiote to his chest and rolled onto him, crushing Venom in a way that they both liked.

 

“Memory believes before knowing remembers.” He said, his voice thick with sleep. “William Faulkner wrote that.”

 

**Who?**

 

“Old dead guy.” Eddie mumbled. “Was better with words than with people. He could have used a symbiote.”

 

**Will we go to dinner this week?**

 

“Yeah, we’ll go, sweetheart. Good night.”

 

Venom shivered a little at the name. Eddie was still so fragile, it was hard to remember that sometimes. When they were together, Eddie felt whole, Eddie was happy. Other forces threw him off balance so quickly that it was frightening. It was like Venom never existed in the first place. Physical enemies were easy. Venom could kill them, could eat them whole or rip them to shreds, but the holes in Eddie’s mind? It had searched Eddie’s brain over and over, touched every molecule and atom, felt the vibration of every bond, and it still couldn’t find what made Eddie... _Eddie_. His mind simply didn’t live on this plane of existence, and that was terrifying. Something that Venom couldn’t touch, not with its physical form. Icy blue fear filled its mind, and Eddie groaned a little in his sleep, the fear soaking over their connection.

 

**Good night, Eddie.**

 

Venom flowed through Eddie’s bloodstream, watching its own cells mingle with Eddie’s, its own molecular and elemental structure interact with the human organism. Eddie was so precious, so perfect that it was impossible for the symbiote to understand just how Eddie could feel so worthless and alone.

 

Not when Venom knew what alone truly felt like, the absence of any other. To feel the gaping nothingness but your own self when every part of you screamed for something to give you purpose.

 

Or worse, to have a host who only wanted you for what you had to offer, not for what you were. Those were its worst memories, the ones that had plagued it when it landed on this small planet, the ones that had driven its hunger, fed its anger when it found that the selection of hosts on this planet were either too stupid to function or so full of pain that it was unbearable to bond with them.

 

Eddie had changed all of that, for Venom. He was a home, and an equal. Venom was so lucky to have Eddie that it wasn’t sure that it could ever express its gratitude. Eddie was full of pain, it was true, but he also hadn’t been broken by the world around him. He had actually taught Venom much about resistance to pressure, about shaking off pain like it was nothing and driving forward. About getting back up when life threw you down and told you to stay put.

 

The symbiote was so overcome with emotion at this point that it wrapped itself around Eddie, whispering words that it thought had been lost to it so long ago, in a language it had almost forgotten in the efforts to learn all of its hosts’ languages. Words that it didn’t quite understand or remember, words that altered the chemistry of Eddie’s brain just so to make him shift in his sleep, quietly mumbling nonsense back.

 

\--

 

 

“Hello?”

 

Eddie swallowed, then cleared his throat.

 

“Hi, Anne, it’s Eddie?”

 

“Oh! Hey, this isn’t your number. Is everything okay?” Anne immediately sounded cautious. Eddie couldn’t help but smile, his initial anxiety flowing away after the call had been picked up. She still thought he was a baby—this would be easy.

 

“Well, my phone...uh, I lost it in the bay a few months ago...it’s a long story.”

 

**It fell out of your pocket while we were running for our lives like cowards...told you that would happen.**

 

“What? How?”

 

“Like I said, long story, maybe I’ll tell it at dinner.” Over his dead body would he tell it at dinner. “Anyway, by the time I got my hands on a new one, my old number had been taken...so…I still knew your number, so I thought I’d call you so you knew how to get ahold of me.”

 

“Oh! Okay, thanks. So you were running around without a phone for a while?” Anne sounded very concerned.

 

“Yeah, it wasn’t that long, only like, two months.” Eddie shrugged. In spite of him being a journalist, he wasn’t too dependent on his phone. When you were broke enough, you figured out how to get information without spending any money...and how to make sure others could contact you, even in the event of all power being shut off to your apartment. When forced between the cell phone bill and the internet connection, he’d picked internet, thinking that a lost phone with a cell connection wasn’t nearly as helpful as an existing laptop with a wifi signal. The phrase ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ hadn’t rung more true than at that point.Eddie had ended up enjoying the few months untethered, though, because, among other things, it turned out getting totally and completely lost in the city with Venom was more fun than he’d anticipated. He’d also deeply enjoyed revisiting his college days of lugging around his Nikon F90, snapping photos of the people and places he was reporting on. People tended to smile more when a ‘cute vintage’ camera was pointed at them instead of a faceless digital slab, and that made him feel just a bit less like a probing asshole when snapping a photo after interviewing someone.

 

Anne sighed.

 

“Eddie,” She said. Eddie knew that tone. That was that same fucking tone she had every time he would do something wrong, or would forget to feed the cat, or do the dishes, or--

 

**Wipe your own ass?**

 

Eddie huffed into the phone.

 

“Something wrong?” Anne asked.

 

“Nothing, sorry.” He said. “Anyway, just calling to let you get my number. I’ll see you guys on Thursday.”

 

“Alright, text you the time?”

 

“Yup. Should I bring anything?” Eddie asked.

 

Anne stifled a snort that hurt Eddie’s feelings more than it should have. Venom sent a wave of purple smug energy his way that made him roll his eyes.

 

“No, just yourself.” She said.

 

**Oh, don’t worry, Annie, we’ll be there.**

 

“Okay, sounds good!” Eddie exclaimed, just a little too cheerfully. He tapped the ‘end call’ button on his phone, and tossed it onto the coffee table, sighing. It was a gorgeous spring day outside, and he wanted nothing to do with it. He groaned, and then grabbed a threadbare pillow and put it over his head, flopping down onto the couch.

 

 **If you don’t want her back, then why are you still pouting?** Venom asked. Eddie just grumbled and pressed the pillow into his face harder. Maybe he would suffocate, and then he wouldn’t have to worry about relationships ever again. He held his breath for a moment or two before breathing in, the musty smell of the pillow calming him down just a little.

 

**We won’t let us die in such a pathetic way, Eddie, you know that.**

 

“At least let me get some brain damage before bringing me back.” Eddie grumbled, voice muffled by the pillow. “Then maybe I can survive Thursday.”

 

**No, we need all of the brains you have….besides, that is our favorite part of us.**

 

“Really?” Eddie was so surprised by this that he actually lifted the pillow a little to stare at his stomach, where Venom was peering at him, a small black head growing from his belly button. Venom said nothing, grinning vacantly at him, and he sighed, putting the pillow back over his eyes.

 

“It’s not my rugged good looks or charm?” He asked.

 

**Definitely not. Your brain is our favorite.**

 

Eddie chewed his cheek and suppressed a smile. It was always hard to tell when the symbiote was messing with him, so at times like these he took everything that was said by Venom as a joke.

 

“You’re just messing with me.” He finally said, feigning seriousness for Venom’s sake.

 

 **No.** Venom’s grin widened, and then he sank back into Eddie’s stomach, pushing gentle waves of warmth through his core.

 

“Alright, then I guess we’ll just have to get off the couch.” Eddie sighed, patting his stomach and sitting up. “What do you want to do today?”

 

He was currently out of work, and Eddie had sent out as many contacts as he could, but nothing had popped up yet. They weren’t in financial trouble, since he’d just gotten paid for four back-to-back articles on drug addiction in the city, but they’d need to find some new work if he wanted to keep Venom in his finery.

 

**Aquarium.**

 

“No, I’m not allowed back there after what you did the last time we went.” Eddie said, shaking his head a little. He’d never seen so much broken glass in his entire life, and he was doing his best to forget about the touch pool.

 

**Oh, you enjoyed it. Beach?**

 

“Hm.” Eddie shrugged a little. It was a pretty nice day and it wouldn’t be too crowded at the beaches, since most functional adults were at work.

 

His phone buzzed on the table, drumming against the wood in a jarring rhythm.

 

 **Leave it.** Venom purred, wrapping around Eddie’s waist in a way that made him shiver a little. He shook the feeling off, and picked up his phone. Restricted number.

 

“Eddie Brock.” He said.

 

“Hi, Mr. Brock, this is Jennifer Gonzales, from the Chronicle.”

 

Eddie felt his stomach drop out from under him, and he swatted a black tentacle away from the phone as he searched for a pen and paper.

 

“Uh, hi, Jennifer!” He said, frantically searching for a working pen. He went over to his mess of a desk and started to go through pens one-handed. Why were pens always out of ink when you needed them--

 

Venom thoughtfully tapped him on the shoulder with a pen, and Eddie smiled a little as he took the thin black ballpoint from the symbiote. He grabbed the back of an old census report and started to write on it.

 

“How are you doing today?” Jennifer asked him. She was head editor of the Chronicle, which was one of the biggest newspapers in the city, right behind the Globe.

 

“I’m doing well, it’s a beautiful day outside.” He said. “What can I do for you?”

 

“I’m calling back about your application for one of our open positions for a field reporter.”

 

“Yeah?” Eddie was desperately trying to keep the excitement out of his voice.

 

“Yeah, we were surprised to see your name, honestly, I thought you were doing well at the Globe?”

 

The question was a trap, and Eddie sidestepped it with ease.

 

“I’m actually working independently now, after the problems I had reporting on the Life Foundation. I occasionally do an article for the Globe, but I’m a free agent.” He said. “By my choice, of course.”

 

“And why is that?”

 

Eddie ran a hand through his hair, staring out the window. How do you phrase “because literally everyone in my life turned their backs on me after I tried and failed to take down one of the richest men in the world” without sounding like a self-pitying asshole?

 

**Not everyone.**

 

“Ah, I felt that the type of reporting that I wanted to do just...didn’t fit in well with any established reporting agency, you know?”

 

“You mean good reporting.” Jennifer snorted. “I apologize, that wasn’t professional.”

 

Eddie shrugged, then remembered that Jennifer Gonzales couldn’t see him.

 

“Anyway, we’re looking at picking you up on a contract for the next year, thought we’d give you a trial period of two or three reports.”

 

Eddie almost swallowed his tongue.

 

“Ah—really?” He finally managed. His heart was pounding in his ears. How was this possible?

 

 **Eloquent**.Venom was smiling, though, because the golden excitement rolling off of Eddie was contagious.

 

“Yeah. Do you think you’d have time to stop by my office today to talk about a potential contract deal?”

 

Eddie nodded, then remembered to speak.

 

“Uh, yeah! Yeah, definitely, what time are you thinking?”

 

“2:00?”

 

“Alright, yeah, great. Yes.” Eddie said. “Are you at the Chronicle’s office?”

 

“Yes. Tell the front desk you have an appointment with me and they will tell you where to go.”

 

“Alright, thank you Jennifer!” Eddie said.

 

“Thank you, Eddie, have a good day.”

 

“You too, bye.” Eddie said, taking the phone from his ear and tapping the end call button. He looked around for a moment, then thrust both hands up into the air.

 

“Yes!” He exclaimed. “Fuck yes.”

 

**So excited. We don’t have the job yet.**

 

“I know, but—it’s just so...I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just amazing.” Eddie exclaimed, putting his hands on his head, and turning, still trying to comprehend what had just happened. This could mean the end of his financial woes for a long time. “Do you wanna go for a ride, V? We can even go to Dandelion--”

 

Venom jerked Eddie towards the door.

 

**Dandelion!**

 

Eddie grabbed his helmet, laughing a little, as Venom pulled him out the door and down the stairs.

 

–

 

That was how they ended up waist-deep in mud in the middle of the night, slogging through the muck of the bay in icy pouring rain. Venom covered Eddie completely, due to its concerns about hypothermia and Eddie’s concerns about suffocating when the mud got a little too deep.

 

The meeting with Jennifer Gonzales had been short and sweet. From what she told Eddie, she had been growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of investigative capability of her staff. He hadn’t been on her radar until he’d been fired from the Globe for accusing Carlton Drake of covering up the wrongful deaths of Life Foundation employees. After they’d finally published his story on the exploitation and murder of the homeless, she’d definitely been interested. The interview with Cletus Kasidy had been the deal-sealer, though, as no one had been able to get him to talk about his murders since he’d been incarcerated.

 

“Where is the rest of your work, though, Eddie? I thought you would be a much more popular writer than you are now.” She had said.

 

“Well, I’ve been doing a lot of pseudonym work and ghost writing.” Eddie said. “I can send you my portfolio, if you’d like.”

 

**Or just flex a little...she’s into our brain...she has good taste.**

 

“No need.” She’d said. “The written work I’ve seen from you—with your name on it, anyway – in the past year alone is enough to make me want to hire you.”

 

She contracted Eddie for a three-part article series on illegal dumping that she suspected that was going on in the National Estuarine Research Center north of the city. Eddie had been a little confused as to why she’d talked up his investigative reporting skills and then given him something that was for a wet-behind-the-ears rookie, but he wasn’t complaining.

 

The first article was due in a month, but Eddie had been so pumped up about the job that he’d wanted to get started immediately, so he and Venom were out doing reconnaissance in the gloomy and near silent research center bay area, trying to find some sort of evidence of illegal dumping.

 

_Do you see anything? It’s super-fucking dark out here._

 

“ **Nothing doing.”** Venom growled. **“We were a little overeager, Eddie...though there are a lot of crab farther out, just begging to be eaten.”**

 

Eddie sighed from inside of Venom’s dark wrapping, and then glared at the shore. It was subtle in the fog and the rain, but there were soft green lights flashing back and forth, rhythmically.

 

_There’s something over there. What are those lights?_

 

“ **Wanna go find out?”** Venom grinned. Mystery meant danger, which potentially meant a good fight, and a good meal.

 

 _Yeah, let’s go._ Eddie kicked them into an awkward slogging run, and Venom laughed out loud at their stumbling body.

 

“ **Let us drive...we’re better at it.”**

 

_Alright, but no action until I say so._

 

Venom dove face first into the mud, propelling them forward in a sort of swimming crawl. Eddie shut his eyes for this part and tried not to panic—the idea of suffocating in salty, mud that reeked of decay was not high on the list of things he wanted to do. They reached the shore after a few slimy minutes, and Eddie gasped for air as Venom sank back into him. They climbed the rocky beach, and Eddie squinted through the thick fog at the bright green lights. Venom hovered over his head as a sort of makeshift umbrella, keeping the sheeting rain off of Eddie’s face and out of his eyes.

 

“Those don’t look like flashlights.”

 

**Or headlamps...what are they?**

 

Eddie jogged forward across a dirt access road and up another embankment, dodging a few large puddles. He came up on a chainlink fence with barbed wire running across the top. Behind the fence, about fifty feet back, was a second, taller fence that was straight bars of steel. At the top, razor wire had been paired with a concave curve to the fence that would prevent anyone from trying to climb it. Behind that, a large concrete compound had several green lights on, rotating and flashing quietly into the rainy night.

 

“Do you remember natural research centers having this much security?” Eddie muttered. “Because I sure don’t.”

 

Venom didn’t say anything as Eddie started to climb the first fence. When he got to the top, Venom covered their hands as Eddie vaulted himself over the top of the fence to the other side, protecting them from the barbed wire. That was something Eddie could have used years ago. Something clattered to the ground, and Eddie muttered a muffled curse.

 

**Telling you, get a phone case.**

 

“Yeah, right after I get a fanny pack and a pager.” Eddie snorted, bending over to pick up his phone from the wet ground.

 

**It wouldn’t ruin our look.**

 

Eddie had no idea if that was an attempt at a compliment or an insult, so he said nothing. He squinted at the compound, then froze as a large whizzing drone with a bright green light fixed to its front buzzed by, seemingly fixed between the two fences. Its electric motors whirred at a dangerously high frequency that made Venom shiver.

 

“You see that?”

 

**No, think we lost it behind the giant buzzing monstrosity.**

 

“Oh, shut up.” Eddie rolled his eyes. They moved forward, Eddie glancing around cautiously. The thick fog was making it really hard to tell where exactlyeverything was, or how many of the drones were present. They climbed the second fence with a bit more difficulty, Venom wrapping around Eddie’s arms and chest to help him up and over the curved bars at the top. They dropped to the ground on the other side, and Venom cringed as another drone whizzed by in the track.

 

 **Wanna go after it?** Venom sounded eager, but Eddie had felt his shiver of revulsion and fear at the high-pitched whine of the drone’s motors.

 

“No, let’s just get what we came here for.” Eddie said, jogging across the remaining lawn and putting his hand against the wet concrete structure. The compound was featureless, save for the green indicator lights, and there didn’t appear to be a way in on this side. Venom huffed in the back of his mind, a little disappointed at not getting to chase after a large drone. Inky black tendrils laced from Eddie’s hand and onto the rough surface of the concrete.

 

**Up it is, then.**

 

Venom grabbed Eddie and they climbed the side of the structure, landing on the roof, shaded in the safety of shadow. Green spotlights slid over the roof and around the entire compound, and the low buzzing of motorized drones could still be heard, whizzing past them in the darkness. The fog was thickening now, making it hard to see more than ten feet in any direction. The rain wasn’t letting up either, making for a miserable investigation.

 

They skulked around the roof of the compound for a while, trying to find a vent or entrance of some sort. There were ventilation ducts, which were so small and well-sealed that Venom could fit inside them, but Eddie would have trouble unless he were disassembled and put into a small bag, a fact that Venom helpfully pointed out. Every so often, when they got enough clarityin the fog, Eddie would snap a photo with his phone and take down a few notes. His reporter’s hunch—or maybe just a good bit of common sense--told him that whatever was here wasn’t supposed to be occupied, and wasn’t supposed to have security drones buzzing all over the place ad high speeds.Finally, they found some identifying marks near what Eddie guessed was front entrance on their way off the scene.

 

“ **Third Planet Assembly and Maintenance.”** Venom said, wrapped around Eddie’s head in a mask that protected them both from being identified. **“Something to remember later?** ”

 

 _Yeah. Let’s get out of here. I’ve got enough photographs of the scene, a name,_ _and a...vague location?_

 

“ **Let’s go get some crab.”**

 

 _How about we just go home and I buy you some crab at the grocery store?_ Eddie didn’t want to be out here any longer. Something about this place was really creepy, in a Life-Foundation-Kidnapping-The-Homeless kind of way.

 

It probably had something to do the fact that it was completely generic, built like a cold-war-era bomb shelter, out in the middle of what was supposed to be a nature reserve, and had active patrol bots out around it. The compound was large, too, larger than any reasonable maintenance system should be. They’d come back, but not before Eddie had preformed a pretty deep dive on why this structure was here.

 

They started back towards the way they’d come in, but froze as the front gate started to open.

 

_Hold on, V. Can you like...I don’t know, enhance my vision or something? What’s going on at the gate?_

 

“ **Your optic nerves really only do so much for us. They’re really bad at seeing anything under 625 nanometers. If you were a reptile, it would be easier to pick up on heat signatures.”**

 

Eddie rolled his inferior mammalian eyes underneath Venom’s mask, then squinted at the gate in through the fog. A large white van slowly rolled through the two perimeter gates, its lights off. He quickly pulled out his phone to snap a photo of the van’s license plate as it rolled into the green floodlights.

 

_How many people are inside?_

 

“ **None.”**

 

 _None?_ Eddie frowned. The van rolled to the front door of the compound, which slid open without prompting. The only clue as to how the doors moved was a soft hiss of a series of pneumatic actuators powering on.

 

“ **Wanna take a closer look?”** Venom growled, lacing a long tongue out, eagerly tasting the warm air that emanated from inside the structure. They slid down the side of the compound and took a quick look inside the front doors as the van drove into the compound. A long, well-lit concrete tunnel sloped down at an alarmingly steep angle, and the van rolled forward. It was electric, Eddie realized, which is why it was so quiet, and why they hadn’t heard it coming.

 

 _Not really._ Eddie murmured. _I mean, yes, but we don’t know why this thing is here...or how far down it extends._

 

“ **So let’s find out.”**

 

_I don’t know, V, this place freaks me out._

 

“ **Oh, come on, Eddie. We’re unstoppable together.”** Venom was tempting him slyly, teasing Eddie with promises of adventure and adrenaline, and pairing it with his own hunger, pushing Eddie to take just one more step forward. Eddie glanced down the tunnel as the door started to slide shut, and shook his head. As fun as it would be to figure out what was here...something didn’t sit well with him, in spite of Venom’s attempt at chemical seduction.

 

_Hold off. We’ll come back soon...I need to figure out what we’re dealing with first. Grocery store crab?_

 

Venom’s disappointment was palpable as they headed back towards the side of the compound.

 

“ **Fresh-caught is better. Besides, grocery store crabs make you sad because you are weak.”**

 

_They make you sad too._

 

“ **Only because it isn’t a fair fight.”** Venom said, just a little defensively. Eddie snorted at that concept. Nothing was a fair fight when it came to his Symbiote. They hopped the fence again, after waiting for a few more drones to cycle by, and then headed towards the bay. It would be a long swim home, and Eddie had a lot of information to record, back up, and parse.

 

\--

 

Thursday came quickly, too quickly, for Eddie. He’d been so wrapped up in this fascinating new mystery that he’d forgotten to sleep most of Tuesday and Wednesday, catching only a few hours while Venom went out to eat for them both, grumbling about how their metabolism was only so good and that Eddie should take better care of them.

 

Third planet Assembly and Maintenance didn’t exist as a company, for one. So the name on the door of the compound wasn’t the name associated with the property. Eddie had called the nature preserve, pretending to be a delivery driver that was trying to ship a package to Third Planet, but that hadn’t gotten him very far either. The staff had been less than helpful and had seemed to Eddie to be extremely nervous at his mention of the name. One guy had even hung up on him after he’d asked about it.

 

He’d doubled down at that point, sifting through construction records, business licenses, and purchasing records. He’d eventually found, after about ten hours of searching, that the compound hadn’t been built until about six months ago. He’d figured this out from looking at open source satellite data. Construction had been slow for a while, and then had started to accelerate over the last year. He noted that there were no official employees of the company. It was clearly a shell for something else, with only one old business trademark name coming up from 1990. The company was listed as an Artificial Intelligence Consultation company, with the POC as Gregory Song. When Eddie had tried to dial Mr. Song’s phone number, he’d gotten a busy signal.

 

Needless to say, Eddie was hooked.

 

“It’s alright, sweetheart.” Eddie had said, “This story’s going to be so interesting.”

 

**Here’s an interesting story: ‘Eddie Brock decides to go to bed on time.’**

 

“Ah, you’re just mad because I’m cutting into your alone time.” Eddie said, though he did feel a strong pang of guilt in his chest. He had promised Venom that he would take better care of them, and he hadn’t been completely unaware of the Symbiote’s efforts in the past year to make them happier and healthier. As much as he hated to admit it, the small habit changes had really helped him in general. He still had a lot of problems, but he was feeling more stable than he ever had in his adult life, despite the fact that he was a living as a part-time man-eater.

 

Eddie stood in front of the tiny mirror he had bought and stuck to the bathroom wall after Venom had broken the old mirror, running a comb through his hair.

 

**Why bother? It’s just going to get messed up again.**

 

Eddie paused, then smiled as Venom flashed several images of him pulling his head out of his motorcycle helmet, hair tousled in a way that the symbiote apparently found very comforting and pleasing if the tinted colors of the images were any indicator.

 

He put the comb down, and then rolled his eyes as Venom’s inky essence flashed across his head, messing his neatly combed hair up.

 

“You know, the idea is to let Anne know that we--” he stopped himself. “that I am doing well.”

 

**And this would be indicated by you combing your hair so that she can see your receding hairline?**

 

Eddie sighed and raised an eyebrow at the mirror. He should probably shave, too, he was getting pretty scruffy.

 

“Not a complement, buddy.” He said, reaching for his razor. Even though he knew he needed a lot of improvement to even start to function as a human being, Venom needed a lot of help too. The Symbiote was sweet, once you got past all the cutting remarks, but seemed to be wholly unaware of what was acceptable and unacceptable to say to someone, especially someone who you lived with.

 

Eddie had started counteracting this by telling Venom that what was being said was insulting, hurtful, or ‘not a compliment’, which was his personal favorite. He didn’t want someone kissing his ass all the time, and he’d never been one to ask friends or loved ones to change their behaviour when something irked or hurt him. He hated the idea of being a hypocrite, since it felt like everyone was telling him how to live his life all the time, so he would keep his opinions of others’ choices to himself.

 

Venom, though, was so close and personal that Eddie was pretty sure he would lose his mind if he didn’t start teaching the Symbiote be just a little kinder.

 

**Sorry.**

 

“Thanks.” Eddie smiled into the mirror as he dragged the wet razor over his cheeks. It didn’t occur to him that Venom might be worried, and that the Symbiote tended to get snippy when anxious.

 

**Will we get to pet the cat?**

 

“You,” Eddie pursed his lips to shave the area around his chin. “are going to be very, very quiet during this entire endeavor. And if you are--” He rinsed the razor in the sink.

 

“--You will get to pet the cat. And I will get you something good to eat on the way home.”

 

**Lobster?**

 

“Maybe. You have to be good first, though.” Eddie said. “And being good means the following: No poking out of me while Anne or Dan are present. No taking over my body in any way while Anne and Dan are present. No shouting weird shit so I have to talk really loudly to hear myself. No interrupting.”

 

 **...Sounds like a lot of rules.** Venom muttered, already starting to sulk. Eddie raised an eyebrow at his reflection.

 

“Those are the rules you have to follow tonight. If you want me and Anne to ever have a scintilla of a chance at getting back together, she cannot, _cannot_ know you still exist.”

 

**But Annie likes us.**

 

“Annie,” Eddie sighed, and rinsed his face. “Likes normalcy. And we...are not normal. I am barely on the verge of normal. Me and you together? Definitely not normal.”

 

He grabbed his toothbrush and started to brush his teeth, frowning a little as he felt Venom’s mood darken.

 

**Normal is a fluid concept created by the society that surrounds an individual.**

 

Eddie snorted in surprise, spraying a fine foam of toothpaste onto the mirror. He did not respond until he finished brushing his teeth, then spat into the sink.

 

“That’s from my thesis. I was the only one who gave a shit about my thesis.” He laughed. “Have you been digging through my memories?”

 

**You’ve been busy lately, had to keep occupied somehow.**

 

“Aw, I’m sorry, V.” Eddie said. “This is the last night you have to be quiet, okay?”

 

**Promise?**

 

“Promise.”

 

–

 

They showed up five minutes early to the old house. Eddie parked his bike out front, more than a little nostalgic. He hadn’t bothered to bring wine, knowing that any alcohol within his budget would have been an embarrassment. He’d picked up some nice chocolates instead, since he’d been refining his candy palette for the past year. Venom was surprisingly picky when he wasn’t starving, and Eddie would happily indulge the Symbiote’s odd tastes, mostly for his own amusement (and sanity).

 

“Alright, be good.” Eddie muttered as he removed his helmet.

 

Venom’s lack of a response was encouraging, but Eddie could still very much feel him through their connection. Mr. Belvediere was glaring at him from the second story, and Eddie felt a surge of excitement from the symbiote. The cat hissed at them, then turned and stalked away from the window. Before, Eddie would have taken that as a bad omen, which would have made him too anxious to even cross the threshold of the house, but Venom pushed him forward, just a little, and they went up to the door and knocked.

 

Anne answered the door, dressed in a black turtleneck and jeans. She looked beautiful, of course, and Eddie tried his best to remember the line he’d practiced in his head just a little too often.

 

“Hi Eddie.” Anne said, smiling just a little. “You’re on time!”

 

“Yeah! No traffic.” Eddie said. He offered the box of chocolate. “Uh, I brought some chocolate for dessert?”

 

“Oh, thanks.” Anne looked a little amused. “You didn’t have to bring anything. Come in.”

 

“Is that Eddie?” Dan called. Eddie bit his lip a little and stepped over the threshold after gently wiping his shoes on the doormat. It was still super-weird to hear the voice of another man in what he still, on some level, considered to be his home.

 

Dan came into the foyer, arms open wide and all smiles.

 

“Eddie, hi! It’s been so long, hasn’t it?” He approached Eddie for a hug, but drew back as Eddie shied away.

 

“Ah, sorry.” Eddie mumbled, glancing at Anne. She frowned, concerned.It was at that moment that Eddie realized that he might be an entirely different human being than Anne remembered. Months of solitude with his body-mate had probably changed him in more ways than he had noticed. Acting normal was going to be tougher than he thought. He forced himself to hug Dan, who picked him up just a little. It had been...a very, very long time since he’d hugged another human. He was touched by Venom all the time, but that felt natural, like his own touch. Actually, being touched by the Symbiote was as natural as breathing at this point. He wrapped his arms around Dan and tried not to shiver. Dan felt foreign, too warm and fragrant, the smell of cologne overpowering and not nearly intimate enough for Eddie to want to touch him again.

 

If he’d been a little less nervous, that thought might have given him pause, but Eddie was already focusing on trying to smooth over the awkward moment that he’d caused instead of thinking about just how weird and unnatural he now found human contact. A year ago, he would have given his left arm for a gentle touch or a smile or fuck, even a handshake, but...none of that seemed to matter, now.

 

“How are you, Doctor Dan? You, uh, are still a doctor, right?” He asked, putting on his TV smile. Completely fake, but charming. This seemed to soothe Anne a bit, and Dan just grinned at him, totally clueless.

 

“Of course!” He said. “And Annie says you’ve been working really hard. I’ve even caught a few of your articles. The Golden Sun bust and Cletus Kasidy? Amazing, really!”

 

“Oh, I just got lucky, you know, it was supposed to be about insurance fraud.” Eddie mumbled, but pride still licked at his ears, reddening them a little. He felt a very strange emotion all of a sudden that was distinctly from Venom. Green bloomed over his vision, and Eddie swallowed, trying to suppress...envy? No, not envy. Some nasty emotion that wasn’t his that was directed at Dan.

 

 _Be good._ He whispered in his head, sharing the idea of them being caught and found out. He knew that Venom probably didn’t like Dan because he considered him a romantic rival. In his heart of hearts, Eddie knew that he probably couldn’t win Anne back if Dan was still in the picture at any point, but he hadn’t bothered to share that with Venom because of the Symbiote’s tenancy to eat their problems. He didn’t want to lose Venom, most of all. Whether or not they got Anne back was arbitrary if it meant giving up the Symbiote.

 

“Dan, Eddie brought dessert.” Anne said, trying to direct Dan’s overwhelming attention away from Eddie. “Eddie, dinner’s almost ready, do you want to take your shoes off?”

 

“Uh, yeah, of course, sorry.” Eddie said, bending down to untie his shoes. It was a habit that he’d gotten into after Venom had pointed out that Eddie really did destroy his shoes much faster if he didn’t bother to put them on properly, which was expensive.

 

Eddie hadn’t bothered to bring up their additional expenses in fine chocolates, but had dropped it after Venom had started cleaning the apartment and organizing things on a regular basis. The symbiote was an incredibly tidy housemate, for a man-eater.

 

He quietly sat on a chair in the kitchen, watching Anne and Dan interact and finish up dinner, occasionally adding to the conversation, saying just the right thing to make both of them smile or laugh. It was the usual fare: politics, work stories, family happenings. Things that had once seemed incredibly important to Eddie, but now seemed...vapid. Hollow. Once you started running the streets and ripping the heads off of criminals, the politics of some old men that lived very far away really just...didn’t matter anymore. The house too, seemed the same, but different, as if he were visiting another universe where he had never lived here, never existed in the space, and that these were just his friends who were having Eddie over for dinner.

 

It was fucking surreal.

 

“Eddie?”

 

Eddie blinked, then looked up at Anne, who was raising an eyebrow at him across the island.

 

“Hm? Sorry.” He said.

 

“I said, how are you doing?” She sounded vaguely concerned, still looking him up and down. “You disappeared for a while. We were pretty worried about you.”

 

“Well, I’ve been really focusing on my work, and it’s been a heck of a year, you know.” Eddie said, laughing a little. “It’s been easy to get lost in writing, now that I...uh...” He stopped and then looked away from Anne, not wanting to hurt her feelings and bring up old problems. They’d had more than one really bad fight about his working habits. Actually, they’d had a lot of bad fights about a lot of his habits.

 

“Now that my name is recovering.” He said. “I have another big story coming up, so you guys should keep posted on it.”

 

“Oh, with the Globe?” Dan asked.

 

“No, uh, with another paper.” Eddie said. “I should probably keep quiet about who until the story’s released. Don’t want to jinx myself.”

 

Anne laughed a little. She then picked up the main course, which looked like a very nice pot roast. Eddie could feel Venom writhe a little in disgust at the dead meat, and he sent an apologetic wave of comfort to the Symbiote, who was so bored that it was getting contagious. Unbidden thoughts of playing with Mr. Belvidere kept popping into Eddie’s mind. What was Venom’s obsession with the cat?

 

They sat down to dinner, and Anne and Dan started talking about work. Anne had been promoted in the last six months, and was now working on a large environmental study case that was turning out to be quite the bear. Dan had some interesting hospital stories, though most of them were about elderly patients and the quirky things they had to say in day-to-day interactions. Eddie just sat back and quietly listened, enjoying the weirdness of it all. The house was warm, and the food was good. He was still pretty tired from saying up most of the week, and he found himself missing the conversation of Venom. He sent some warm encouragement the Symbiote’s way, and sneakily downed his entire glass of what he was pretty sure was a very expensive wine when Anne and Dan were distracted by a conversation. He couldn’t process alcohol anymore, but Venom loved to burn it, since it was so easy to break down. He felt his spinal column vibrate, which caused a flash of primordial panic. His brain was still getting used to sharing a body with something else. Venom moved to his stomach, happily filtering the alcohol from the rest of the food.

 

He realized that they were looking at him, now, and he nodded and pretended that he’d been listening to the conversation at hand.

 

“So, Eddie,” Anne asked. “Are you seeing anyone?”

 

Eddie, who’d been happily chewing on a mouthful of salad, choked, tried to swallow, choked more, and then swallowed the mouthful of food and started coughing, his entire face turning red. There was a sudden rush in his stomach, as if something laying dormant for months was awakening.

 

“Uh.” He finally wheezed, once he’d stopped dying, “I’ve uh, been really busy with work.”

 

“But, you’re making friends, right?” Anne probed.

 

“I think that Eddie’s probably doing fine.” Dan said, trying to spare Eddie from the cross-examination that they both knew was coming.

 

“I’ve got some hobbies, yeah.” Eddie said, wiping his eyes, which had filled with tears. He could feel Venom laughing silently at him, and he made a promise to laugh the next time the Symbiote panicked when an ambulance drove by.

 

Anne was not satisfied with this.

 

“Because, you know, I know this really nice paralegal--” She started. Eddie sat up straight in his chair.

 

“Nah, I’m...Anne, not to be blunt, but I don’t think I’m really in dating shape right now.” He said, glancing at Dan, who looked concerned. “I’m still working on myself, you know?”

 

“Well, you look great.” Dan blurted out. Anne shot him what almost looked like a glare, and Dan shrugged.

 

“What? He does. Have you been working out?”

 

“Well, I mean, last time you saw me I was almost dead, so...there isn’t really anywhere to go but up, right?” Eddie said, laughing a little. He felt something warm spread across his chest under his shirt, and gently touched himself there, knowing that Venom had broken one of the rules to come to the surface of his skin and comfort him.

 

“Oh, speaking of which,” Dan lowered his voice, almost conspiratorially. “I heard--”

 

“Dan, no, please don’t bring this up.” Anne pinched the skin between her eyes.

 

“No, it’s important!” Dan said. “So, one of the ER residents was telling me about how they were out night fishing a few weeks ago, and that they saw this giant black chupacabra looking thing loping about on the beaches.”

 

Eddie felt his heart skip a beat.

 

“Oh?” He asked. “You don’t think it was another Symbiote, do you?”

 

Eddie had found that, when someone was dancing on the edge of figuring out a secret, guiding them right into and through the secret was the best way to make them forget about the whole thing. Anne, having lived with Eddie for years, knew that this is what he was doing, and fixed him with a look that made him want to shrink down into his chair. He resisted the urge, and smiled dumbly at Dan.

 

“I mean, that might be it, right? There was more than one.” Dan said. “I mean...Venom hasn’t come back, has he?”

 

“I wish.” Eddie said, feeling Venom sneak the piece of potato that he’d put into his pocket under his shirt so that Venom could feed on the food directly.

 

“I mean, do you though?” Dan asked. “He was killing you.”

 

Eddie had already mentally moved to soothe Venom, who was getting anxious, very anxious, at the line of conversation.

 

“I do.” Eddie said. “And that wasn’t on purpose, that was because I wasn’t eating the right stuff--”

 

“Like people?” Anne said, “I mean, when I was--with Venom, he...” She swallowed, shivered, and then went back to eating. Dan shot her a sympathetic look.

 

“It’s been really hard on her.” He said. “She’s had a lot of nightmares from when she was bonded with Venom. Did you have any after-effects?” He looked at Eddie carefully, who was starting to sweat a little.

 

“Uh, not really.” Eddie said.

 

 **Nightmares? But...Annie _liked_ being bonded.** Venom sounded...devastated. Eddie didn’t remember that the symbiote was supposed to be keeping quiet. Eddie had nightmares fairly often, but they were never about being bonded to Venom. More the opposite, actually.

 

“Dan, I don’t think we should keep talking about this.” Anne said, looking down at her plate. She bit her lip, and then covered her mouth, with a hand, as if she were trying not to vomit.

 

“Sorry.” Dan apologized, gently reaching for her. “We can drop it.”

 

Anne took his hand and smiled at him in a way that broke Eddie’s heart. That was how she used to smile at him. Eddie blinked back sudden tears, Venom’s hurt feelings of rejection and isolation overwhelming him in a moment of weakness. He cleared his throat, faking like he’d choked on something, and excused himself.

 

“Sorry, just gonna go get some air.” He said, really not caring about how much of a dick he was being. They went out into the backyard, which was bathed in LED light, not like the soft incandescent light he remembered. It gave the backyard a cold, fake appearance, only increasing the surreal nature of the evening. A cold fog was rolling through this area of the city, the chill quickly biting at his fingertips.

 

Eddie walked over to the small retaining wall that held up a tiny garden, and sat down, putting his face in his hands, trying to quell his own anxiety enough to help Venom. What was he doing here? This wasn’t his world anymore. It hadn’t been since...well, since Venom had shown up.

 

The end of this, though...it hadn’t been Venom’s fault. He’d done that all himself. Eddie sighed and took a slow breath, something that he had learned from those stupid meditation videos that Ms. Chang had given him. Venom was hiding right now, isolating himself, so Eddie was on his own.

 

So what if he got Anne back? Magically, of course. He wasn’t even going to think about the logistics of actually getting her back at this point. She’d have to know that Venom was alive, and that he and Eddie were still bonded.

 

Eddie sighed deeply, and put his hand over his mouth, staring into the lit windows of the house. He knew she wouldn’t try to separate them, but...she wouldn’t be happy. And he wasn’t really sure that Venom understood what it had really been like, especially near the end, to live with someone so unhappy with you. He wasn’t criticizing Anne’s choices, she had been completely justified in kicking him out, in hindsight. He probably would have kicked himself out too, all riddled with ego and anxiety and neurosis that were completely unhelpful.

 

Still, though, there was an inescapable void in his life, one that he’d been ignoring for a while. Venom’s companionship had been and continued to be more than enough for him emotionally, and he’d been so depressed that sex really hadn’t been a factor that he’d needed to address. He was slowly starting to feel normal again, though, and the thought occasionally wandered into his mind. When it happened, he kept himself busy with work, unwilling to get involved in a relationship with someone who he knew wouldn’t understand Venom or him, or the thing that they were together. He was great at flirting, and terrible at actually sealing the deal. Most of the time, Eddie didn’t want to have a one night stand anyway, so that sort of thing was out of the question. He was great at dating, and bad at relationships. Eddie Brock, emotional fast food. The sardonic thought popped into his head so fast that he couldn’t help but smile. Tastes good when hot, but causes indigestion and regret later on.

 

Eddie found himself waiting, hoping for Venom to quip in about ‘toe-ter tots’ or something stupid, but nothing came from the Symbiote.

 

This gave him more time to think. He saw Anne and Dan talking in the kitchen, and sighed. He’d have to venture back in soon, lest they get worried about him.

 

So he got Anne back, so then what? She’s okay with him and Venom being...whatever they are. At least, at first. Eddie sighed and shook his head. This wasn’t getting him anywhere. Round and round, buteverything always came back to Venom, and Eddie knew that he wouldn’t give up the Symbiote for anyone, no matter how important. It was non-negotiable.

 

There was a soft brush against his leg, and Eddie jumped as he looked down and saw Mr. Belvedere rubbing up against him.

 

“Hey buddy.” He said. “You miss being mean to me?”

 

He leaned down to pick up the cat, who glared at him but let himself be picked up.

 

Eddie placed the cat on his lap and began to stroke him gently. Venom, who had been sulking, noticed the distinct image of new touch input, and came back.

 

“Hey buddy.” Eddie said again, this time to Venom. “You okay?”

 

**Allowed to talk?**

 

“Yeah, I’m just sitting out back.”

 

**Don’t feel good. Just wanted to help.**

 

“I know.” Eddie sighed. Mr Belvedere looked up at him spitefully for breathing too loud. Eddie just smiled. He missed the cat. They’d had a very odd relationship that mostly consisted of Eddie being kind to it and it hating him in return.

 

**Sorry.**

 

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Eddie said. “This one you don’t need to apologize for.”

 

**Does Anne...hate...me?**

 

Eddie shrugged. “I don’t think so.” He said. “I don’t know what Anne thinks of you...she’s probably scared, that’s all. I know I was, at first. Here, pet Mr. Belvedere.”

 

Venom poked out a tentative tendril from Eddie’s wrist and gently stroked the cat’s head. Mr. Belvidere perked right up and actually started to purr. Eddie had never seen Mr. Belvidere purr in all the years he had lived with Anne.

 

“What the actual fuck.” Eddie said, staring down at the cat. “I don’t know how the man-eater gets more love than I do. I’ve picked up your shit.”

 

 **We’re both the man-eater.** Venom pointed out. Eddie sighed and leaned back, planting his hands in the soft, damp earth of the garden, and stared at the featureless sky.

 

 **Mr. Belvidere thinks you smell like prey.** Venom said after a moment.

 

“Don’t bond with him!” Eddie exclaimed, batting Venom’s tendril away from the cat. Venom maneuvered around Eddie’s hand, pulled away from the cat, and then went back to stroking him.

 

 **Not bonding, just talking. Used to think that too, until…** Eddie felt a strange feeling surge from the Symbiote. It was foreign, but it turned Eddie’s stomach in a way that felt extremely familiar, almost like...

 

“Are you...was that embarrassment?” Eddie asked, laughing a little. Venom growled a little.

 

**No!**

 

Eddie laughed again, hearing the very bad lie in the Symbiote’s voice. That was something else he loved—Venom sucked at lying.

 

“Hey, V, I’ve been thinking.” He said, after a moment, watching Anne and Dan embrace in the kitchen.

 

**Hm?**

 

“I don’t...how do I put this?” Eddie paused for a long time. “I don’t need to get Anne back to be happy, okay?”

 

 **Nonsense. You still love her.** Venom said.

 

“Uh...yeah, you know, I do. You don’t...ever stop loving people, you know?” Eddie said. “It always kinda hurts for a long time when something ends.”

 

**So how do we make it stop?**

 

“That one I’ve never figured out.” Eddie said. “But, you know, it hurts a little less over time.”

 

 **Liar.** Venom said. Eddie cringed. It was true, it was a lie.

 

“Okay, well, sometimes you have to tell yourself lies to move on with your life, you know?”

 

 **No.** Venom said. And like that, the anxiety was back, roiling from the Symbiote’s consciousness in waves. **Don’t understand. Anne liked being us. Made her feel powerful, made her feel strong.**

 

“I...” Eddie paused and swallowed, feeling pain and anger radiate off the Symbiote in a way he’d never experienced before. Purple, indigo, red blooms swirled across his vision, tinting the dark backyard. “I dunno.” He finally said, lamely.

 

 **It was what she wanted, gave her what she wanted.** Venom moaned. Eddie’s head was swimming, now, negative emotions flowing from the Symbiote’s consciousness like smoke from a burning building. **Give you what you want. Power. Strength. Protection**. **Saved you.** **Did what you wanted, did what she wanted. Was good, was good.**

 

Eddie had felt this way before. He’d felt like this when Anne had kicked him out, when any of this girlfriends had left him. His heart ached. He felt tied down with invisible weight, like getting up off of the retaining wall would take all of his energy and more. Like laying here and dying was the only option, the best option.

 

He took a breath, then another breath. It felt like the worst panic attack of his life, his throat threatening to close up, Venom’s toxic energy threatening to stop his heart.

 

“V,” He gasped out. “Venom, stop.”

 

 **I was good, Eddie, I was _good_. **Venom sounded on the verge of tears. Hysteria was something Eddie had never heard from the Symbiote. Venom was always in control, never concerned about a thing. Something was wrong. Really wrong.

 

“You are good.” Eddie whispered. “It’s okay.”

 

 **No one wants us, Eddie**. **No one wants...me...** The last word was quiet, so quiet.

 

“I want you.” Eddie wheezed, reaching a hand uselessly against his throat in an effort to clear his windpipe. It was all mental, it was all imaginary. Venom was doing something to make him feel like he was suffocating.

 

 **Just saying that. Lying**. **Hurt you, you hate eating people, you hate heights.**

 

“I mean—those things aren’t my favorite, but--”

 

“Eddie? Are you out here?”

 

And then Venom was gone. Eddie could breathe again, though his head was still spinning. Anne had opened the back door and poked her head out. Eddie waved at her weakly, smiling a little. His time on television had taught him a lot about shaking off weird or distressing situations and acting like nothing had happened. This was a moment where those skills came in handy.

 

“Are you okay?” Anne approached him with a degree of caution that Eddie would have found insulting if he hadn’t just been choking on nothing while his body-mate threw a tantrum in his head.

 

“Yeah, just hanging out with Mr. Belvidere.” Eddie said, gesturing to the cat in his lap. Mr. Belvidere apparently hadn’t noticed his choking fit, or, more likely, hadn’t cared. Anne smiled a little.

 

“He’s warmed up to you, I guess?” She said. “He hates Dan too, so don’t feel bad. Are you going to come in for dessert?”

 

“Uh, you know, I think I actually have to get outta here now.” Eddie said. He wasn’t about to risk another choking episode out of politeness. “Dinner was great, though, thanks so much.”

 

Anne smiled and sat next to him on the retaining wall. She looked him up and down and raised an eyebrow.

 

“You’re really sweaty, are you sure you’re okay?” She asked.

 

“Yeah.” Eddie said. “Just kind of warm tonight. You know how I get sometimes.”

 

Anne made a face that hurt his feelings just a little.

 

“Ah, yeah.” She said. They were silent for a moment, and then Eddie swallowed.

 

“Uh, so things are going well with you and Dan?” He asked.

 

“Yeah, they’re...they’re really great, actually.” Anne said, smiling almost apologetically. Eddie gave a small shrug and smiled back. It wasn’t like he was gunning to get her back at this point. He was more worried about Venom’s absence. Eddie couldn’t feel the symbiote at all in the back of his mind, and it was starting to freak him out.

 

“You seem happy.” Eddie said. Anne looked at him, then nodded.

 

“I...worry about you, though.” She said. “Have you...have you been seeing anyone? Anyone at all?”

 

“Nah.” He said. “I’m too busy for dating.”

 

“I know how lonely you get.” She said. “You...weren’t ever good at it, you know?”

 

Eddie shrugged.

 

“Guess I found enough work to me occupied.” He finally said. It was a bullshit response, and they both knew it. Anne frowned for a moment, then decided that it wasn’t worth the inevitable argument. She smiled ruefully.

 

“Well, at least there isn’t anyone to disappoint when you end up working that much, huh?” She said. “That must be nice.”

 

Eddie laughed.

 

“Yeah.” He said. “No one has to deal with insomniac Eddie...or won’t-get-up-in-the-morning Eddie.”

 

“Well, I mean, if you ever want me to set you up with someone...” She trailed off.

 

“I have your number.” Eddie beamed at her in a way that was completely artificial. He gently picked Mr. Belvidere up off of his lap and then put the cat down on the brick wall. The cat bristled a little, since Venom was gone from Eddie’s presence, but didn’t hiss or scratch at him.

 

They stood up, and walked through the house and into the front yard. Anne was still looking at him strangely, as if she was trying to solve a case that hadn’t quite made itself clear to her yet. Eddie stared back at her with his dark, clear eyes, and she finally glanced away.

 

“Well, it was good to see you.” She said, finally.

 

“Good to see you too. I hope Dan doesn’t mind if I don’t give him a goodbye hug.” Eddie said. Venom was still missing from his consciousness. Where was he?

 

“I think he’ll live. Keep in touch.” She said.

 

“Of course. I’ll let you know if my number changes.” Eddie winked at her, and if he’d been paying closer attention, he would have seen a ghost of a flush on her cheeks. “Thanks again for dinner, Annie, it was great to see you.”

 

He reached out to hug her, and as he did, a flash of rejection rooted itself at the bottom of his stomach and made him recoil. He jerked back out of the hug.

 

“Woah!” Anne stepped back. “What was that?”

 

“I...uh...sore back.” Eddie said, rubbing his lower back to make a point. “Sorry, makes leaning down a little tricky.”

 

Anne smiled a little, then waved at him.

 

“Have a good night, Eddie.” She said.

 

“Oh, yeah, I’ve got a wild night planned.” Eddie laughed, “Gonna go hit some of the clubs, hang out with the young people...you know, the usual Thursday night.”

 

She laughed, and then headed inside, leaving him standing out on the street. As soon as the door closed, Eddie’s smile vanished.

 

“Venom?” He whispered. “Sweetheart?”

 

There was nothing. Eddie frowned, then went over to his bike.

 

“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” He said, finally. “You and I. Don’t fade out on me yet.”

 

He felt a very, very faint push that was not him, and he sighed, releasing a breath that he hadn’t known that he’d been holding. A silent agreement.

 

“I’ve got you, sweetheart.” Eddie said. “I’ve got you.”

 

The roar of the bike was the only comfort to him as they rode back home, Eddie wondering exactly what was wrong with his other, and how he was going to manage to fix it.


End file.
